Stick Fights And Lip Plates Essay

Abstract: In the country of Ethiopia, there live a group of people called the Surma. They all live very closely to one another. In this culture, the two popular practices they do are stick fighting and lip plates. For the men stick fighting is a type of fighting that is done in order to marry one of the girl in the village. The winner of the fight wins a wife and the loser ends up getting really hurt and ends up with no wife. For the women in this culture, lip plates is a common practice that is done in order to attract the male to get them to marry them. It is said that the bigger the lips the more likely hood that the women is going to get marry and that her family will get more cows as well.
Main Points: The Surma people live in a remote
corner of south-western Ethiopia, virtually untouched by the modern world. Their culture practice a polygamy type of marriage. A polygamy is a form of marriage in which a person has more than one spouse at the same time. When a man has more than one wife, the relationship is called polygyny. In this culture, in order for a marriage to occur a women would need to have her lips pierced with a lip plate around it. It is considered beautiful when a women has a large lip plate around her lips. Back in the day the lip plates were emplace in order to scary away anyone that was not part of the village and it help prevent the females from getting kidnap by other people. As for the men, in order for a marriage to happen he would need to first battle someone from his village in a stick fight. Sticking Fighting is a popular fighting that is done in the country of Ethiopia. The winner of the fight wins a wife while the loser goes home with a badly injury body and no wife. Most of the women in the village likes to watch these kind of fighting because they know that their future husband is there waiting for them. Of course at the end of the day whoever is the strongest fighter is the most popular to the women because they all want to marry a strong fighter.
What the men look for in a wife is a women who has large lips and if the women did not have large lips then the men would not even think twice about marrying her.
For the women that had large lips it was extremely important for them that they take care of their lips. Since it was so huge, the lips were easily able to get any kind of infectious disease from it. Also, the more the lips were stretched the more easily it could break. It took around six hours or more to place lip plates around the female's lip because if it was not done correctly then the lips would break. According to the video, it is said that the lip plates took about six months to prepare. During the six months the women there would start wearing smaller lip plates in order to get ready for the larger lip plates. When a lip break it means that no marriage could ever occur for women for the rest of her life. As more and more people are growing, the new generation of the women there dislikes this kind of practice and believe that a women does not need to do this in order to get marry. For the younger generation, the girls there likes to paint their body with clay all over them. Their clay bodies is considered a way of attracting the men in the village to marry them. Of course this is not a efficient compare to a women who has a lip plate around her
lips. During the day of the wedding the women would get together and make clay plates and pots together. As for the men, they would go and engage in stick fights. Stick fighting is considered entertainment in this culture. When a men marry a women it is a tradition that the groom provides cows for the bride's side of the family. The number of the cows that were given out were determined by how large the lip plates were. This is way the mothers in the village encourage their daughters to get large lips so their family can be provided with a lots of cow and cattle. Before the marriage happen, it is said that if a women were to get pregnant before they were marry then the men would have to pay the women cattle for her family. If the women did not get pregnant then the men would not have to pay anything. Once the wedding occurs, the couple that got marry celebrate with the people in the village with a pot full of wine. Most of the time the men there would get drunk so they would not have to do any kind of work later on. The people there would also drink blood from the cattle and cow because they think that it has a lot of nutrient in it and believe that by drinking the blood the men would become stronger fighters. The gender roles in this culture is similar to any other culture around the world. The women were in charge of caring, nurturing, making dinner, and taking of their husband. The men were in charge of participating in stick fights for their women. For the younger children, the boys in the village where in charge of helping out their father with the cattle. Pastoralism is a type of agriculture that is done in Ethiopia. Pastoralism is a food gathering strategy based on animals. This type of agriculture is found in places that are generally unsuited for agriculture. This type of agriculture was the only kind that the people in the village could practice. In other words, it is sort of a hunt and gathering technique that they use in order to catch the animals. The animals were the only type of resources/food available to them. It helped provided them by giving meat, milk and blood. Since the village is located at a deserted place other kind of resources were very rare to find.
Conclusion: The film was about the people in Ethiopia called the Surma live in a village that had forty to a thousand people. Stick fighting and lip plates were a common tradition that was practice in this culture. As time goes by traditions can be changed by the future generation. Stick fighting is a form of fighting that happens every day because it is their own type of entertainment. The women there are busy making lip plates for their lips. This topic relates to the topics we learned in class because it talks about culture and the type of marriage that is being practice. In class we learned that culture is something that is learned at a young age by our parents. It is passed on to children so they can continue this culture for many generations. Marriage is an another topic that we talked about. Polygamy one of the type of marriage that we learned about. It is when a men marry more than one women at a time. This type of marriage is considered illegal in other countries. I learned that I am very grateful for being able to live in a country that practice monogamy and does not practice stick fighting or lip plates.