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Mursi woman with clay lip plate |
Do you know women of the Mursi tribe cut their lips and
small clay plate is inserted in to the lips? When a girl reaches her puberty
her lower lip is cut and held open by a wooden plug until heals. But the
dimension of the stretch depends on the wearer. Mursi owns good plant based ointment to
recover the wound quickly. If a girl prevent from wearing this plate she is
considered as lazy and she is hard to find a husband. Mursi are a surmic
pastoralist ethnic group that inhabits Southwestern Ethiopia. According to
history they came to recent territory 200 years ago from Sudan-Ethiopia border lands.
Mursi tribe is one of the most dangerous and aggressive tribe in the world. The
motto of the Mursi tribe is “It is better to die than live without killing.”
Their main crop is sorghum. They also grow maize, beans chickpeas. Women main
work is to fetch firewood, water and cook the food provided by men.
The unmarried women are more worth when the size of the clay
plate increases. The size of the plates represents the amount of cattle they
give to the husband as a price for her hand in marriage. Nowadays this becomes
a source of income as tourist pay money to take their pictures. If there’s no
major health issue of stretching one’s lips out, the major side effect is lips
never shrink as it is. Women didn’t wear these plates all the time. They remove
the plate to eat, sleep and when they are only in the company of women and
children. They wear this in the company of men, during ceremonies and special
occasions.
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Mursi girls practicing to wear lip plates |
It is said that one
of the main reason for wearing this type of clay plate is to rescue from slave traders.
But researchers reject the explanation after revealing that the plates are
being wearing as a symbol or expression of their social & economic status.
According to article issued in September 1938(Thaw & Thaw 1938:357) said
that girl babies wear large plates in both their upper & lower lips. Small
wooden plugs are inserted into the holes pierced in both upper & lower lips.
These holes are gradually increased in size when they grow up until it reaches
size of large soup plate. Some resources express the idea that if this is true
why the activity of disfiguring body didn’t discourage the young men within the
tribe. And also they mention that this tradition is not unique to Mursi tribe women.
Like Mursi tribe Suri, Chai and Tirma tribes in Africa wear lip plates. In
those tribes not only women men also wear these special plates. According to me
this is somewhat painful and uncomfortable but according to reporters some
women like to wear this special plates and think that it increase their beauty.
Reference-GhanaWeb.com
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