Surma (people)
Surma (also called Suri , Shuri , Dhuri , Dhurma ) is a people in the province of Kaffa in southwest Ethiopia and on the Boma Plateau (to which the Boma National Park belongs) in neighboring South Sudan . They have a total of 26,900 members, 24,200 of whom are monolingual (2007 and 2017 census).
The Surma live from cattle breeding and, to a lesser extent, from tourism . Their original way of life is threatened on the one hand by the Ethiopian government, which wants to civilize the "primitive people" of the Surma , and on the other hand by the influences of the Sudanese war refugees streaming in from the west .
language
Surma ( ISO 639-3 suq ) belongs to the Nilo-Saharan language family and there to the Surmic languages of the East Sudanese group . The dialects Tirima (also called Dirma, Cirma, Terna, Tirima, Terema, Tirmaga, Tirmagi, Tid ) and Chai ( Cai, Caci ) belong to this language . Surma is closely related to Mursi .
Society and culture
General
The Surma live as cattle breeders and small farmers in the middle of the hilly, grassy and bushy southwest of Ethiopia. Cattle are a status symbol . An average Surma man has around 40 to 50 cattle, a rich man sometimes up to 100. The cattle are also used as an exchange price, for example when getting married. Each cattle is marked with an earring, as cattle thefts are common because you can only achieve great wealth if you have a particularly large number of sisters and can therefore hope for a great bride price inheritance. If a Surma manages to successfully steal cattle, he will earn fame and recognition within the community. But the risk of being shot is great; the Surma have been defending themselves and their flocks for some time with Kalashnikovs , the Surma men's second most important status symbol. And sometimes a cattle theft turns into a real war between two villages or neighboring peoples, especially with the Bomé . The Surma also conflict with the neighboring Nyangatom . Most of the time, the dispute revolves around pasture areas or cattle theft. At the time of the Rwanda War in 1994, the Nyangatom were the first to acquire firearms, which gave them an edge in the battle for supremacy in southwest Ethiopia before the Surma rearmamented. The fight claims several deaths every year, including women and children.
Weapons are also fired on all sorts of occasions, at births, to greet or say goodbye to important people and sometimes just to pass the time. The Surma live in a loose democracy in village communities, where a community elder , the Komaru , is recognized as a wise advisor and spiritual leader. The Komaru wears a crown of fur and feathers and is guarded day and night by his bodyguards . Whole families sleep in the simple wooden and mud huts that are covered with plants, otherwise life takes place outside.
Body jewelry and marriage
Traditional Surma women adorn themselves with lip plates . They place large wooden or clay plates in their perforated and dilated lower lips and ear lobes. They are taken out only for sleeping or when no men are around. The first of the up to three centimeters thick plates is used by a Surma woman about six months before their wedding, usually when they are about 20 years old. An increasingly larger plate is then inserted until the lip is adequately expanded. The origin of this tradition lies in the time of slavery: To prevent them from being robbed of their wives, the Surma began to use lip plates to deter women. The larger the lip plate, the greater the number of cattle that will be given as bride price. A large plate can sometimes cost a groom's family up to 60 cattle. The final choice of the groom is made by the woman. A Surma man can be married to up to two women.
For ritual purposes or for social occasions, the Surma paint their bodies with white clay. While serpentine lines are more common for men, women mainly paint themselves with small dots and circles. Decorative scars are also common in women , mainly on the arms and upper body, which are now scratched with razor blades . Men usually only pierce their earlobes and, like women, use small clay plates there. Since clay plates break very easily, many Surma women are constantly busy making new plates.
While originally, apart from a loin cord, clothing was completely dispensed with, today the Surma also occasionally wrap themselves in a cloak and wear individual pieces from western wardrobes.
food
Most of the Surma people eat corn or millet porridge with milk. There is also meat from goats . When a goat is slaughtered, the fortune teller tries to predict the future from points and irregularities in the innards .
Cattle are rarely slaughtered; they rather serve as regular suppliers of blood, which is, however, usually only consumed by the male family members and is an important source of protein for them. On average, every cattle is bled for several liters every fourteen to thirty days. The head is held by a hat boy and an arrow is shot into the jugular vein . The blood is collected in a clay container and drunk immediately. The wound of the animal is then closed again with a compress made of moist mud.
The Surma brew a thick, alcoholic drink called Geso from corn . They drink from this all day long, both men and women and older children.
Donga fight
Main article: Donga fight
The donga fight serves on the one hand as a sport and ritual of manliness , on the other hand it is also used to fight serious conflicts. In a donga fight, the sensitive parts of the body are wrapped in grass or, today, all sorts of helmets and shooters made from civilization rubbish, and a two to three meter stick is used to try to force the opponent to his knees with blows and levers or to incapacitate them. An opponent who is on the ground may no longer be hit. If the reason for the fight is of a sporting nature and not a quarrel, man for man face each other in a duel until at the end only the two best fight for victory among themselves. A referee and the assembled community of men ensure that a fight is not fatal . If a man dies by breaking the rules in a donga fight, this sometimes results in the loss of all property and the banishment of the surviving opponent. Occasional fatalities, broken bones and loss of body parts such as eyes and fingers are common.
Donga fights are particularly common in months after the harvest, when food is abundant and not much work to do. Often two villages meet and fight against each other. The whole village takes part in the preparations for a donga fight. The young men train days in advance and heat each other up. The women - especially the young ones - dress up and adorn themselves, because the donga fight is used explicitly for young people to flirt , one reason why the young men are encouraged to perform at their best. Before the fight, the men mix the wood of a tree with river water and drink it until they vomit . This is to cleanse the body of the Geso. After that, blood is drunk and the whole village sets off until it meets the people of the other village at the agreed meeting point, usually a grassy plain. The young to middle-aged men form a large circle, inside which sometimes up to ten people fight against each other while they are cheered on by the others. For the married women, a donga fight is an opportunity to meet women from other villages, exchange news and sell Geso, while the younger ones try to choose a future man from among the fighters.
See also
literature
- Jon Abbink: Settling the Surma: Notes on an Ethiopian Relief Experiment. In: Human Organization, Vol. 51, No. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 174-180
- Jon Abbink: Authority and Leadership in Surma Society (Ethiopia). In: Africa LII, 3, 1997, pp. 317–342 (PDF; 1.8 MB)
- Jon G. Abbink: Violence, Ritual, and Reproduction: Culture and Context in Surma Dueling. In: Ethnology, Vol. 38, No. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 227-242
