Culture  

The Beautiful Scarification Of The Suri People Of Ethiopia

By Nonso Egbo

30 January 2022   |   8:26 am

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One peculiar thing about Africans is their love for cultural arts, scarifications and ritual/religious practices. In today’s article, we’d be looking at the Suri tribe of Ethiopia, East Africa.  What does Scarification mean? Scarification is the act of covering, disguising, and transforming the body by creating wounds in one’s own flesh in order to cause…

Ethiopia, Omo region, Regia region, Bargoba village, Suri tribe. Boys in traditional clothes and face paint searching for lice in one friend’s hair in Bargoba village.

One peculiar thing about Africans is their love for cultural arts, scarifications and ritual/religious practices.

In today’s article, we’d be looking at the Suri tribe of Ethiopia, East Africa. 

What does Scarification mean?

Scarification is the act of covering, disguising, and transforming the body by creating wounds in one’s own flesh in order to cause indelible markings. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood body modification procedures done today and it is largely perceived in Western society as a harmful cultural practice. Most scarring takes place during rituals to celebrate the onset of puberty, the first menstrual cycle and childbirth. The Suri people pride themselves on their scars and how many they carry. Their women perform scarification by slicing their skin with a razor blade after lifting it with a thorn. After the skin is sliced, they rub in ash or sap to inflame the cut enough to swell up and scar significantly.

For the men, the scars are majorly done to tell stories of how many people/enemy they have fought and killed. Most scarring takes place during rituals to celebrate the onset of puberty, the first menstrual cycle and childbirth. Therefore, scarification is widely practiced in almost every society in Africa and has held a strong cultural significance in many civilisations, including the Suri.

Brief background of the Suri people

The Suri people are an agro-pastoral people and inhabit part of the west Omo zone of the southern nations in Ethiopia. They also inhabit the mountains of the Great Rift Valley in the plains of south-western Ethiopia. As a people, they pride themselves on the scars they carry. The Suri peoples practice has significant historical and cultural importance and over 30,000 strong group still partake in these rituals such as the lip plates, body scarifications and stick fighting. For Suri women, scarification is an elaborate part of their culture and signifies everything from beauty to adulthood or even, in some cases, is simply a mark of belonging. Most girls and women sport delicate swirls of raised flesh in intricate patterns. The members of the Suri community undergo extremely painful rituals, including lip plates, scarification and dangerous stick fighting all.

Method of performing scarification by the Suris’ 

The Suri pride themselves on their scars and how many they carry. Their women perform decorative scarification by slicing their skin with a razor blade after lifting it with a thorn. After the skin is sliced, the piece of skin left over is left to eventually scar. Also, when girls hit puberty, they have their bottom two teeth removed before a small hole is cut into their bottom lip. Then a clay disc will be inserted into the hole, which is steadily increased overtime.

Importance of scarification to the people

The men traditionally scar their bodies after they killed someone from an enemy group. This custom or ritual is quite painful and is said to be a way of getting the younger Suri to get young men to be used to bloodshed, which the communal leaders believe that it comes in handy when they clash with other tribes. The participants fight with little or no clothing, and the violent clashes sometimes result in death.

The endurance of the pain of scarring exhibits strength and discipline, especially in tribes where males have roles as hunters and warriors. A young man who has already experienced the feeling of torn or cuts on the flesh is considered less likely to fear the teeth of a wild animal or the tip of an enemy’s spear.

Scarification provides an opportunity for the men to attract a partner. The practice of scarification is also largely for aesthetic reasons in order to attract the opposite sex and enhance the tactile experience of sex.

Tribe members who are unwilling to participate in scarification were generally not included in the group’s activities and are often shunned by their society. Therefore, they are not considered as having acquired the full standing as agents in their society. They would also lack the capacity for meaningful behaviour, such as greeting, commanding and stating. Therefore, scarification can transform partial tribe members into “normal” members entirely accepted by the group. Scarification gives them the ability to communicate fully, which is a key element for being considered as a normal member of the group. Scarification can also help change status from victim to survivor.