| Total population |
|---|
| 42,838 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Ethiopia |
| Languages |
The Hamer (also spelled Hamar) are a tribal people in southwestern Ethiopia. They live in Hamer Bena woreda (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 Assistant Administrator of Hamer Bena, Ato Imnet Gashab, has commented that only six tribal members have ever completed secondary education.
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The 2007 national census reported 46,532 people in this ethnic group, of whom 957 were urban inhabitants. The vast majority (99.13%) live in the SNNPR.[1]
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.[2]
The Hamar people are semi-nomadic pastoralists migrating every few months to find pastures for their goats and cattle. Huts are round and conical made from a dome frame of branches covered with grasses, mats and hides. About 20 huts are built around a meeting place where dancing and feasting occurs, and together with a cattle and goat pen make a village. The Hamar often trade with their neighbours for sorghum and corn as they do not grow it themselves. Goats and Cattle offer milk and meat. Sorghum is made into a pancake or porridge and eaten with a stew. Men typically wear a checkered skirt of cloth while women wear a cow skin skirt.
Cow jumping is a rite of passage for men coming of age and must be done before a man is permitted to marry. The man-to-be must "jump the cattle" four times to be successful (only castrated male cattle and cows may be used to jump over). This test is performed while naked (except for a few cords bound across the chest) as a symbol of the childhood he is about to leave behind him. On completion of this test, the young man joins the ranks of the maza - other men who have recently passed the same test and who spend the next few months of their lives supervising these events in villages throughout the Hamar territory. Unlike the Minoan bull-leaping, the cattle is held still by maza, so the physical risk is limited. The ceremonies end with several days of feasting, including the typical jumping dances, accompanied by as much sorghum beer as the cow-jumper's family can provide to the visitor .
The maza are also responsible for a ritual which precedes the main cattle jump. The women of the village (and in particular, the would-be jumper's sisters) purposefully provoke the maza into lashing their bare backs with sticks which inflict raw, open wounds and scar them for life. However, these wounds are seen as the mark of a true Hamar woman, and all the village's women participate. Because the sister or relative was whipped at the man's ceremony and endured the pain for him she can later in life look to him for help if she falls on hard times because she has the scars from the whipping she received for him to prove his debt to her. Women commonly end up as the heads of families because they marry men who are much older than themselves while they are young. When her husband dies she is left in control of the family's affairs and livestock. She is also in control of his younger brothers and their livestock if their parents are dead. Widows may not re-marry. One Hamar woman who had long since left the village and begun life in a larger town spoke out against the whipping practice as unfit for an educated person .
Another pre-Islamic concept is mingi, a term meaning the state of being impure or "ritually polluted"[3] A person, often a child, who was considered mingi was killed by forced permanent separation from the tribe by being left alone in the jungle or by drowning in the river.[4] Reasons for being declared impure include birth out of wedlock, the birth of twins, the eruption of teeth in the upper jaw before the lower jaw, and chipping a tooth in childhood.[5][6]