Kara (people)
Kara or - as a foreign name - Karo describes a small ethnic group in Ethiopia with 1,401 members according to the official census in 2005/6.
They live on the Omo River in the region of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples in the southwest of the country. As a rule, the Gomba , Bogudo and other small groups living in this area are also counted as "Kara", although in some ritual contexts they are strictly differentiated from the "actual Kara". Early sources, v. a. explorers and big game hunters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries refer to the Kara as Kerre .
language
The language of Kara is the same Kara ( Kar'appo , literally "mouth / language Kara"), which, like the closely related languages of neighboring Hamar , Banna and Bashada to südomotischen languages counts. One difference between the Kara language and the other languages of the Hamar-Banna-Bashada cluster is the numerous loan words from the Nyangatom .
Culture
The Kara still live isolated and largely untouched by modernity. They belong to traditional religions and are culturally related to the Hamar. Like them, they practice the "jump-over-the-cattle" initiation ritual, called bula or pilla . They paint their bodies with natural colors, the patterns saying that a man has bravely killed a lion, leopard or an enemy. Scar tattoos are also practiced and hair is artistically styled.
More recently, modern developments such as firearms have gradually penetrated the Kara area, which also makes the occasional inter-ethnic conflict more dangerous, especially for a numerically small ethnic group like the Kara. They have therefore made peace with the larger tribes in the area.
economy
The Kara are subsistence farmers who cultivate crops, especially sorghum, in a dry environment on the banks of the Omo. For this they are dependent on the river's annual flooding.
See also
Individual evidence
Web links
- Gezahegn Petros: The Karo of the lower Omo valley. Subsistence, Social Organization and Relations with Neighboring Groups. Addis Ababa University - Department of Sociology and Social Administration, Addis Ababa 2000 ( Social Anthropology Dissertation Series. 6, ZDB -ID 2527107-6 ), (also: MA thesis, Addis Ababa University, 1994).