Surma people

Suri is the name of a sedentary pastoral Nubian tribe and its Nilo-Saharan language in southwest Ethiopia, near the Sudan border.

Their location is remote, in desolate mountains, and traditional rivalries with their tribal neighbors have become quite bloody as automatic firearms have become available from the parties in the Sudanese Civil War. The police allows foreigners to travell there only with a hired armed guard.

They have a macho culture, with an obsession for stick fighting called donga bringing great prestige to men - especially important when seeking a bride - and their competitive, cheering villages that can spill over into group amuck, at the risk of serious injury and occasional death. The dark skinned men often are shaved bald and frequently wear litle or no clothes, even during stick fights.

Life is largely communal, sharing the produce of the cattle (milked and bled like the Maasai do) which is the measure of wealth in which brides are priced according to the size of the ornamental clay plate women wear in their thus gravely deformed lower lip.

Though their chief (styled komaro?) wears the fur crown of a pagan priest-king, he is merely the most respected elder and can be removed.

Sources and References

• BBC TV-docu series "Tribe" showed explorer & anthropologist Bruce Payne living among them a few weeks.
• Abbink, Jon (1998) 'Ritual and political forms of violent practice among the Suri of southern Ethiopia', Cahiers d'études africaines, 38, cah. 150/152, pp. 271–295.