One of the most unusual tribes of the world — Mursi lives in Ethiopia. They are considered the most aggressive ethnic group. All men
of this tribe have Kalashnikov’s automatons which are illegally transferred for them through
the border. Besides they start to drink since the early morning, and become
uncontrollable till the evening.
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| The Mursi girl |
Those soldiers of the tribe who has not automatons or who has
simply left them in the dwelling carry sticks with themselves. With the help of
these sticks they prove their leadership. A man who pretends it should hammer
the competitors to semi death.
This tribe, probably, belongs to mutants of the Negroid race,
because it differs considerably from the usual standards of beauty by its
appearance. Both men and women are cobby, big-boned and bandy-leg. Low
foreheads, flat noses, short necks. Bodies are flabby with the flubbed bellies
and the humped backs. There is almost no hair on their heads. That is why all
women-mursi generally wear the intricate headdresses of a difficult design made
of branches, rough skin, marsh mollusks, dried up fruits, dead insects,
someone’s tails and some smelly carrion. Their wrinkled masticated faces with
small eyes have extremely malignant and wary appearance.
One more interesting fact is their very specific smell. It is
possible to think that they simply wash themselves seldom, but then you find
out that they rub themselves especially as the protection against all
parasites.
The unique “ornament” of the face which they use, is absolutely
unusual, even for wild people. The matter is that the lower lip of this tribe’s
girls is cut in an early age. They begin to put into the lip the billets of
wood, every time with the bigger and bigger diameter.
The hole in a lip gradually increases during years. The “plate”
of the burnt clay is put into the hole on the women’s wedding-day. This plate
is named daby. The functions of this daby we’ll explain later. The diameter of
such daby in a lip can reach 30 centimeters, exceeding diameter of the head!
However, the tradition to wear plates has appeared not because of beauty,
rather vice-versa.
When Ethiopians were
captured and taken into bondage, they violently had crippled themselves, and
nobody wanted to take them after that. Now the size of a plate is a beauty
criterion. The more is plate, the more cattle will be given for the bride.
Girls-mursi always have a choice to do the hole in a lip or not. But for the
girl without the stretched lip a very small repayment is given.
If such a plate is pulled out, the external edge of a lip under
the hole will be 10-15 centimeters flabbied in the form of peculiar round
plait. Many mursis do not have frontal teeth for the plate doesn’t knock the
teeth. And all the time bleeding chapped tip of tongue sticks out like a rotten
sting.
Besides women-mursi have the other ornaments hanging on their
short necks. These ornaments are not less strange and terrible than daby. It is
neck-lace made of bones and human nail phalanxes. It’s named a nak. Normally
the usual man has about 28 such a stones. Nom less than four or six hands were
used for making such a nak. Besides, some “ladies” have several such terrifying
necklaces hanging on the neck. They fatly shine and exude a luscious fetid
smell — every day they rub each bone of neck-lace with the melted human fat.
Their blown up bellies look exotically. The original ritual
tattoos in the form of the symmetric lines consisting of separate hems are
written on their skin. These «hillock» have various sizes and forms: round,
oval, linear. They are “laid on” in rather peculiar and terrible way. The
larvas of various land and water African insects-parasites are pushed under the
skin through the notches on it.
They start to develop there. But starting struggle against the
newcomers an organism encysts “strangers” by means of its connective tissue.
Eventually these larvas die leaving their various tombs under the skin. Knowing
it, mursi alternate the places of their introduction specially, depending on definitive
“pattern” on the skin which they wish to receive. Practically for any offence a
priestess of a tribe cuts off hands of a man who has broken laws (here naks are
recollected at once).
A ccording to traditions of this mystical tribe, all its
women are Priestesses of Death. First in the evening they prepare some rather
easy narcotic potion in their huts by pounding the dried fruits of a special
marsh nut in a powder. Then the woman put the prepared potion on the
plateau-debi and approaches the narcotic mix to the lips of her husband. Both
of them start to pinch it simultaneously (thus the wife puts out tongue through
the hole between teeth). This part of a ritual ceremony is called «the kiss of
death». By the way, the way of usual for us kiss is unknown for them.
Then the bunch of some stupefying grass which starts to let out
the streams of yellowish smoke is rushed to the smoulder. The man rises by the pole
of “mezzanines” and lays down over the hearth so that the sweet streams go
directly to his face. He doesn’t just lay down, but he places his head on
deepening of a
special small stand-pillow. This small thingummy reminds the
form of the coil. It is called brkuta and it is made of wood of a secret plant
which wasn’t shown us. There are bout two tens of such surprising adaptations
for dream in the hut of the Supreme Priestess of a tribe called — Srek.
Srek rubs each of them with one of the numerous potions and
slanders a special individual spell. As a result, every brkuta becomes the
carrier of some absolutely concrete dream! It can be “film” about successful
hunting, or night of love, about a tasty gluttony, or victorious fight with
enemies, etc. Every evening at the instance of husband the wife brings him a
wooden headrest with that vision which he wishes to see before possible death.
This part of a ceremony is called «the death dream». And this name is not so
casual. While the man is dreaming sweet in a dope smoke, the wife is going to
give him a poison.
The Supreme Priestess of tribe prepares this deadly powder of
those bottom teeth which have been pulled out from women’s mouth, drawing them
on the difficult potion made of nine herbs which grow on hummocks of dead
Lotagipi marshes. After a while, the woman-mursi rises to the sleeping husband
and blows the deadly powder into his mouth. This part of a mystical ceremony is
called «the death sting». But the passions are not finished here. Having
poisoned the husbands all Priestesses of death gather in a hut of Srek and
carry out the mysterious ceremony there.
The ominous ritual finishes with the action which we have named
«the death roulette. Mursi called it «the death gift». The Supreme Priestess
passed by all the huts of village rising to the poisoned men and putting into
their mouths the saving antidote. This mix is in her necklace which decorates
her difficult “hairdress”. And no one except her and God of Death, Jamda,
knows: who of men of the tribe is permitted to continue life and who is not. It
happened that Srek did not give someone the antidote. In such case she left the
hut and drawn white cross on the plate of his wife. Such woman remained the
widow during the rest of life and had the respect in a tribe as the priestess
who has done her duty for all-powerful Jamda.
The bodies of such widows are located in stumps of a hollow
trunk and are suspended on branches of the special trees after their natural
death. Bodies of all other fellow tribesmen, both men and women, boil down.
Soft tissues and broth become the meals, potions and amulets. Skeletons of
fellow tribesmen serve like stones for secret ways in dangerous bogs for not to
fail.
However, something that seems wild for us, it is something
blessing for this tribe. Mursi — is the servant of God of Death. Their belief
says that bodies of men-mursi are some kind of ritual “prison” of God Jamda in
which he concludes Souls of his assistants — Death Demons in case of their
disobedience. And white strips on the bodies symbolize the fetters of a flesh
temporarily constraining rebellious Spirit.
The woman-priestess destroyed these physical terrestrial fetters
by methodically killing flesh of men with the narcotic poison. In this way they
approached an hour of clearing for higher spiritual entity pining in them.
These women are the simple Spirits of Darkness who was sent here for performance
of mystical ritual ceremonies and who has the right to return to their Lord —
only after natural death of the received body. Kindness doesn’t excide without
harm, light — without darkness, and life — without death. And each person
serves one of opposite forces, executing the mission which was given him by the
Creator. And we have not to judge whose way and belief is more correct. The
ancient tribe mursi simply executes the duty.
The cow is slaughtered as an offering during important ceremonies marking completed
passage through one age-grade and movement to the next. When warriors (moran)
complete this cycle of life, they exhibit outward signs of sadness, crying over
the loss of their youth and adventurous lifestyles. Maasai diviners (laibon)
are consulted whenever misfortune arises. They also serve as healers,
dispensing their herbal remedies to treat physical ailment and ritual
treatments to absolve social and moral transgressions. In recent years Maasai
laibon have earned a reputation as the best healers in Tanzania. Even as
western biomedicine gains ground, people also continually search out more
traditional remedies. Maasai are often portrayed as people who have not
forgotten the importance of the past, and as such their knowledge of
traditional healing ways has earned them respect. Laibons are easily found
peddling their knowledge and herbs in the urban centers of Tanzania and Kenya.
