Life for the Mursi is often arduous and sometimes dangerous. But they have learnt to live well and there is much time for relaxation, chatting, music and gossip.

The Mursi live in the lower valley of the River Omo in southwestern Ethiopia and number around 10,000. This website was launched in 2007 in hopes of correcting the exoticised view of the Mursi found in …

The Mursi, Chai and Tirma are probably the last groups in Africa amongst whom it is still the norm for women to wear large pottery or wooden discs or ‘plates’ in their lower lips.

The Mursi as we know them today are the product of a large scale migratory movement of cattle herding peoples in the general direction of the Ethiopian highlands.

The Mursi, and the neighbouring Suri (also known as Surma), are most famous for is their lip-plates, but they also have a rich tradition of scarification, body ornamentation and dress.

From this opening mystery – where were the bulls going to drink? - the narrative leads us to a resolution in which the ancestors of today’s Mursi ‘find’ the Omo River, cross it by magical means and take …

How do their southern neighbors, who are not yet faced with the same degree of social, eco n o m i c and political transformation, view the Mursi in the north? What image do the Mursi have of …

Religion and healing for the Mursi are very much inter-connected. The Mursi are guided in matters of religion by their experience of the world around them, rather than by a strict theological doctrine.

We were off that day to the lower Omo River in southern Ethiopia, home to several Nilotic-Omotic peoples, including the Mursi, considered among the most fascinating and colourful tribes on earth.

The social organisation of the Mursi, a pastoral tribe of the lower Omo Valley, southwestern Ethiopia, by David Turton. PhD thesis, London School of Economics, University of London, 1973.