Ethiopia’s Omo Valley | Africa’s Last Frontier, National Geographic Magazine: Party Before the Manhood Ceremony

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Clouds of dust—flooding the lungs, coating the mouth, burning the eyes—don’t stop Kara women from dancing outside an improvised beer hall as their sons prepare for initiation into manhood. Married Kara women share relatively equal status with men but often perform more physical labor. A party celebrates fourteen Bull Jumpers in the Karo tribe that will go through the manhood ceremony that happens only once in a generation. These traditions are symbolic of an intact ritual in the culture, not a performance for tourists in the Omo River Valley of Ethiopia.