South Omo, in the badlands between Ethiopia and Northern Kenya’s Turkana region is a living gallery of Africa’s most primitive tribes, almost untouched by civilization – except that they have traded their spears for Kalashnikovs. Two dozen tribes live there in a scorched, mountainous landscape, some agriculturalists, others pastoralists. It is a hostile and savage region where it is not unusual to see men herding cattle with an automatic rifle hanging from their shoulder.
Sudden violence triggered by cattle rustling between competing tribes erupts sporadically and inevitably ends in bloodshed…and ongoing blood feuds. Automatic weapons are part of any dowry.
We spend a week deep in South Omo, more remote from civilization than probably anywhere we’ve been in Africa. The colourful, pagan markets do not carry any manufactured product. Apart from guns, we do not see a modern product in the villages we visit. Even mobile phones, ubiquitous in the rest of Africa are conspicuously absent from South Omo.
