We arrived in Omorate - the Galeb Village - around 10 AM and could not find any of the village men in order to get permission to visit the village. This mystery was solved when we stumbled upon the district police compound where every Galeb male was incarcerated. They had gathered the entire tribe, 150 or so men, into a large courtyard where the local police commissioner lectured them on why they should not kill Hamar.

Galeb men, like Hamar and Karo, in a proclamation of warrior might, dress their hair with a kind of clay helmet woven into the hair and decorated with ostrich feathers after they have recently killed someone. Most of these men had their hair shaped into this fantastic design. The police chastising had all of the components of a cult meeting. The commissioner would speak a few sentences, after which the Galeb would reply in unison, ‘ayeea’ (yes). We watched this four about 10 minutes over the shoulder of an angry police officer who finally managed to shoo us away.

Since the meeting appeared to have no end in sight, we decided to deal with the women directly. This is a big no-no when there are men around to stop you, but if the women are on their own, they are happy to talk. A spear-toting grandmother who claimed to have mothered half of the Galeb population showed us around. The village itself proved to look like something out of a Star Wars film: low egg shaped grass huts in an empty desert plain.

The generally cheerful and outspoken village women seemed to take a dim view of their husband’s war mongering – freely referring to brothers and husbands as “criminals”. I explained to them that I understood their predicament as my own leader was also a greed-maddened warmonger whose thoughtless violence has caused my village serious problems. To our good fortune, the men never appeared and we were able to finish our visit amicably with the Galeb women.

After leaving the Hamar in Turmi, we drove west along roads that can barely be called roads, to Karo territory. Indeed, they were more akin to openings in the scrub forest that led one to another than anything else. How our driver was able to navigate this is beyond my understanding, as there really seemed to be no discernable landmarks and the distances were too vast to know by rote. Perhaps he just knew which direction to travel in.

The Karo village of Korcho is set dramatically high on a cliff overlooking the Omo River and a beautiful lake rich in abundant fish and crocodile life. The Karo themselves are closely related to the Hamar but do have some notable differences. First, the Karo have their own unique language. Second, Karo women have a different hairstyle. Whereas the Hamar wear their hair in dreadlocks formed of red clay, the Karo women wear their hair in little beads formed of red clay. Third, the Karo do not perform the woman-beating.

The Karo proved to be forceful business people. As I walked through the attractive Korcho village, I was greeted with aggressive extortions to pay for everything from simple photos to the right to walk past someone’s hut. Faced with such aggression, the visit was a disappointment and ended quickly.

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