Mursi Memorial
Mursi Memorial
BULLETS OF HONOR
Mursi Memorial
The Mursi people live in the lower valley of the Omo River region in Southwest Ethiopia. Funerals are very important occasions for the Mursi and can last for three days.
At the memorial of a respected female elder, Ngalugu Dumar, young Mursi men herald their arrival by stampeding their herds into the grieving family’s compound. Throughout the ceremony, the men sing loudly, praising their favorite bulls whose long horns are often wrapped in strips of red cloth during mourning. The youths, wearing brightly colored headbands and their bodies smeared in cow dung, fire Kalashnikov rifles in the air.
The numerous volleys indicate Ngalugu’s venerated status and usher her disembodied spirit from the village. Cattle represent wealth to the Mursi, so the greatest respect that they can show the dead is to honor them by presenting their finest animals, one of which will be sacrificed. The Mursi believe that Ngalugu’s soul now exists in the Afterworld as an intermediary between the living and the spirit world, allowing her family to communicate with her as if she were still alive.
Ngalugu’s commemoration provides an occasion to celebrate with song and dance, as well as for the young people of the village to preen and show off to each other. Young men perform energetic dances, raising their arms above their heads in the shape of bull’s horns. Youths sport colorful strips of fabric around their foreheads and necks, along with belts of spent cartridges. Men and women display scarified arms and torsos, the swirling patterns of deep scars evoking the form of cattle horns, designed to attract the opposite sex. Young women wear large ear plugs of fired clay to enhance their beauty. The memorial brings together several clans, serving as an important social occasion and opportunity for courtship.
In Mursiland today, new government roads are being built by the Chinese to facilitate entry into Mursiland, and are frequented by tourists visiting Mago National Park. Along the road are traditional Mursi villages being exposed to intensive tourism, attracting up to eighty tourist vehicles per day. As the buses pull up to the villages, Mursi women come out wearing an array of items on their bodies, from chastity aprons with iron beads on their heads to warthog tusk talismans on their ears and lip plates punctured with holes and painted with white spots. The women count every click of the tourist’s camera and charge thirty cents per click. These once highly symbolic ornaments have become pieces of exotic apparel to attract the tourist dollar, generating much-needed income.
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