page_title: Hamar people
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Hamar people / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Collars for hamer married women This is an image of Cultural Fashion or Adornment from Ethiopia
context_page_description: The Hamar are an Omotic community inhabiting southwestern Ethiopia. They live in Hamer woreda, a fertile part of the Omo River valley, in the Debub Omo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region. They are largely pastoralists, so their culture places a high value on cattle.
context_section_description: The Hamar are known for their unique custom of "bull jumping," which initiates a boy into manhood. First, female relatives dance and invite whipping from men who have recently been initiated; this shows their support of the initiate, and their scars give them a say on who they marry.
  The boy must run back and forth twice across the backs of a row of bulls or castrated steers, and is ridiculed if he fails.
  The Assistant Administrator of Hamer Bena, Ato Imnet Gashab, has commented that only seven tribal members have ever completed secondary education.
  Mingi, in the religion of the Hamar and related tribes, is the state of being impure or "ritually polluted". A person, often a child, who was considered mingi is killed by forced permanent separation from the tribe by being left alone in the jungle or by drowning in the river.
caption: Collars for hamer married women
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