Mursi Woman with Large Lip Plate
Ethiopia, Omo Valley 2013
A Mursi woman holds her child and her lip plate as she poses for my friend, Elizabeth, and me. She holds her lip plate to present its best angle to the camera. I don’t think she needs to hold it other wise. Her lip plate was the largest that I noticed. The women must have their lower incisors removed to accommodate the lip plate. It’s quite a sacrifice for beauty.
Sans Lip Plate
A Mursi woman wearing an elaborate head dress but no lip plate. You can see that her stretched lip dangles below her chin. It gives the impression of an open mouth to me. I thought that she was quite old, but I see now that I’ve looked closely at her portrait that she isn’t all that old. Maybe in her 50’s.
In our ignorance we asked her to kneel on hard ground covered with tiny rocks. She did. She knelt there without complaint for at least five minutes while we dithered with our cameras. Sorry!
The Mursi looked a healthy bunch. Tall and muscular and quite handsome. They have a reputation for being ‘difficult’ but except for trying to extract more money from us than we had been told to pay, they were very cooperative.
To visit the Mursi and many other tribes: contact Osman at www.soratours.com