Ritual - Leon Hoang: Bull Jumping Ceremony

 Leon Hoang

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

12 September 2020

The Bull Jumping Ceremony

I mentioned this specific ritual in class a few weeks before, but I thought it would be interesting to research it further. The tribe in question are called the “Hamar” or “Hamer”. They inhabit the Hamer woreda (Districts of Ethiopia), in a part of the Omo river valley. As well, they raise lots of cattle and are unique because they do not believe in personal land ownership, rather everything is shared. 

In preparation for the bull jumping ceremony, the boy is first covered in sand and his head is shaved. It is believed that sand will remove his sins. He is then smeared with animal feces and bark from trees is tied around him in a shape of a cross. I think it’s interesting to see the many meanings of the cross in different religions. 

At sunset the boy is stripped of all of his clothes and begins the ritual. The boy then jumps across the cattle several times showing his skill. If he succeeds, he is given the title “Maza” which means he is a real man. If he does not, he will be ridiculed and will have to wait another year before attempting it again. 

I found this ritual very interesting because it outlines the differences of coming of age ceremonies between us and other cultures.

https://absoluteethiopia.com/the-culture-behind-the-bull-jumping-ceremony



     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prisoners Design What They Can't Buy- Luke

Luke Kirchner      I chose to read the article "Objects Made by Prisoners in the United States". This was a very interesting article, as it showed what it's like to be in an American prison and how they make some objects. When Prisoners are in prison, the severity of their punishments can vary, but the lack of creative freedom is often detrimental to each prisoner. This lack of freedom can sometimes drive their creativity to make their own objects, showing off individual expression. Some items like pens and toothbrushes were not given in the full form, due to the fear of prisoners turning them into weapons. Instead, the prisoners thought about how they could fix these problems. The article says "The items shown here, made by inmates in the U.S. prison system, illustrate the severity of restrictions imposed on prisoners as well as the human instinct to persevere through creativity and invention" (The Atlantic).      They took the ink cartridge for the p...
Read more

Josey - The Fashion Industries Effect on the Enviroment

           Clothing production around the world has doubed since the year 2000, making the fashion indsutry the second biggest polluter in the world. The impact of the indsutry on the enviroment has always been substantial, but in recent years as it has continued to grow, the impact has grown with it. It is estimated that aproximately every second a truck load of clothing is dumped or burned in a landfill. Not only is this a huge amount of resources, but it is also clothing that could easily be reworn or recycled. This is an extremely wasteful amount and is not only affecting the resources that are used, but also the workers who are being forced to produce materials at extremely fast rates.            Wasting these materials is one of the major ways that this is having an effect on the enviroment but another is the waste that is produced and put into the enviroment. Often when factories produce clothing, once they are done the...
Read more

Recovering Ecosystems

Tyler Holland Mr. Roddy IHSS 26 March 2020 Recovering Ecosystems A large challenge for stopping the increasing problems that we face with air pollution and other environmental problems, is that humans are natural control freaks. People try so hard to invent new ways to control the risks that our Earth faces instead of just trying to let nature do its work. Isabella and Charlie, a couple who owned farmland in England, came to the realization that nature solves its own problems, after they had a run in with a feared weed for many farmers. Once they discovered the 'cursed thistle' in their farms they feared the worst as it spread so quickly, but they had decided to let it happen because using pesticides and chemicals was not an option for them. After a while they started to see a flourishing environment in their acres that they had not seen there before, painted lady butterflies flew across the land and after a while caterpillars were crawling all over their 60 acres and ea...
Read more