Ethiopia 11 A Karo Village

 The larger the lip plate, the more goats her father could demand from prospective bridegrooms for her hand in marriage. In these societies, marriage is a kind of pension fund: you pay for a big lip plate on your wife when you are young in the hope that you will have plenty of daughters with decent lip plates to sell in your old age.

 A couple of days later, we were in the lands of the Karo staying at a lodge at Murle on the east bank of the river. In the afternoon, we walked up to Kolcho, a Karo village. Termite towers rose from the savannah. We skirted a lake where tropical bou-bou birds were singing duets. In the woods nearby, families of colobus monkeys were quarrelling.

Stanley Stewart  (to be continued)