Cultural Attractions

 

South Omo is unique and fantastic. Descending from the green urban highland into the low-lying plains of south Omo feels like a journey not merely through space but also through time. South Omo is as close as one can come to an Africa untouched by outside influences. The culturally diverse, immaculately colorful and defiantly traditionalist agro pastoralists who inhabit there region seem to occupy a physical and psychic landscape little different to that of their nomadic ancestors. This is Africa as it once was. Historians believe that the south served for millennia as a kind of cultural crossroads, where quite different ethnic peoples- Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and Semitic met as they migrated from the north, west, south and east. The peoples of the lower Omo valley are considered among the most fascinating on the African continent. All in all depending on where one draws the line as many as two –Dozen different tribes occupy south Omo, some numbering tens of thousands, others no more than 500, each one of them culturally unique.