Meet Nania and her son Koro from the Mursi tribe. Nania like most Mursi women likes to wear her lip plate on special occasions. Nania lives in a small hamlet deep in the Mago National Park far away from any reliable source of water. For this reason life in the village can be very hard, especially during the dry season. Nania owns a couple of cows which she milks daily to feed her family. She never boils the milk as she believes that in doing so all the cattle in the village would be cursed and die. Instead she keeps the milk in dirty plastic bottles, given to her by people traveling through the area. The bottles of milk are scattered around inside her warm hut; sometimes for days before it's consumed. Needless to say, this practice, coupled with dirty drinking water from nearby puddles, result in chronic bowel problems for Nania and many other people in the area.
Meet Nachuna and her son Olabile from the Surma tribe. Nachuna runs her own household and owns her own fields. She is free to spend the profits from the crops as she whishes as opposed to women in other more male dominated tribes. Nachuna sometimes wears a lip plate. At the point of puberty she had her bottom teeth removed in order to get the lower lip pierced. Once the lip was pierced, it was stretched and a lip plate was inserted in the hole of the piercing. She, like all Surma women, sees this as sign of beauty. The size of the lip plate also indicates her value in cattle on the day of her wedding day. The bigger the plate, the more valuable she becomes.
Meet Kato from the Hamer tribe. Kato lives in a small village near the town of Turmi together with her husband and his other two wives. Kato is the third wife as symbolized by the two metal necklaces she wears. This makes Kato more of a slave than a wife. Because they live so close to a town, her family has become to rely on the products which are on offer in Turmis' weekly market. In order to afford this, Kato is made to walk for hours with a heavy load of firewood on her back which she tries to sell to locals. Like all Hamer women, Kato braids her hair and then applies a deep red clay mixed with animal fat to it. This custom is a very important one for Kato and all Hamer women as it makes them more attractive.
