Hamar People (Hamar Tribe): Bull-Jumping Ritual Turns a Boy Into a Man
Hamar people (Hamar Tribe) (also spelled Hamer) are a community inhabiting southwestern Ethiopia.
They live in Hamerworeda (or district), a fertile part of the Omo River valley, in the Debub Omo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR).
They are largely pastoralists, so their culture places a high value on cattle. The 2003 national census reported 46,532 people in this ethnic group, of whom 10,000 were urban inhabitants. The vast majority (99.13%) live in the SNNPR.
According to the Ethiopian national census of 1994, there were 42,838 Hamer language speakers, and 42,448 self-identified Hamer people, representing approximately 0.1% of the total Ethiopian population.
The Hamar are known for their unique custom of “bull jumping,” which initiates a boy into manhood. First, female relatives dance and invite whipping from men who have recently been initiated; this shows their support of the initiative, and their scars give them a say on who they marry.
The boy must run back and forth twice across the backs of a row of bulls or castrated steers and is ridiculed if he fails.
The men of the tribe will often style their hair with clay, creating a sculpture of sorts that is styled with various pigments, mostly red and white, and in smoothing the clay they create very small protruding tubes in which they house ostrich feathers from their hunts.
The Assistant Administrator of Hamer Bena, Ato Imnet Gashab, has commented that only seven tribal members have ever completed secondary education.
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The bull jumping ceremony involves running across the backs of seven to ten castrated bulls multiple times without falling. It is an important ritual for the Hamer tribe and essentially qualifies young men for marriage, raising children and owning cattle.
But if the odds are against him, and he is unsuccessful, falling more than four times, he would have to wait for another year to try again.
Once successful, he becomes a man and animal skin is placed on his neck amid cheers from kinsmen and blowing of horns.
When the father decides his son is ready, he gives him a small phallic carved wood called “Boko”. The boy then hands it to the girls he meets along the way and they must kiss it three times as a form of blessing and then return it to him. He then travels to all his relative’s houses presenting the Boko given to him by his father and also invites them to the ceremony.
As an invitation, the guests receive a strip of bark with a number of knots or a coil of rope marked to show the number of days leading to the ceremony. The invitees then cut a piece from the bark or rope every day to keep track of the days left before the bull jumping rites.
Bride price payments usually amount to about 36 goats and 20 cattle. A local alcoholic beverage made with sorghum is served to all invited guests.
During the whole ceremony, women and young girls are whipped…..To be continued.
Rivers of Sand is a 1973 documentary film by Robert Gardner that portrays the Hamar people of southwestern Ethiopia.
Hamar parents have a lot of control over their sons, who herd the cattle and goats for the family. It’s the parents who give permission for the men to marry, and many don’t get married until their mid-thirties. Girls, on the other hand, tend to marry at about 17.
Marriage requires ‘bride wealth’, a payment made to the woman’s family and generally made up of goats, cattle and guns. Although it’s paid over time like instalments of a bank loan, it’s so high (30 goats and 20 head of cattle) that it can’t usually be paid back in a lifetime.
One effect is that whenever a family has a lot of livestock, the wife’s and mother’s brothers will claim outstanding bride wealth debts. It means that Hamar men can’t stay wealthy and grow wealthier as their livestock is claimed by others. If a man can afford the bride wealth, he can have three or four wives. Women only marry one man.
Because men tend to be older than their wives, they often die first. Lots of Hamar households are headed by women who have survived their husbands – one study found an amazing 27 out of 39 married women were widows. A widow also has power over her husband’s younger brothers (and their livestock) if their parents are already dead.
Brothers and sisters are important to each other in other ways. The most dramatic example is the ritual whipping before a brother’s cattle-leaping ceremony.
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