Tribe - Season 2, Episode 02: Hamar

Adventurer Bruce spends a month with the Hamar, a sorghum-growing and cattle-herding tribal people in the fertile part of the southern Etiopian Omo valley. After witnessing women willingly being flogged bloody with whippy branches for half an hour by the Maza, recently initiated unwed men, as prelude for a stark-naked youngster's initiation by jumping on and walking over the cattle they line up and hold, Bruce gets permission from the chief of Argude village to stay with elder Jammu and follow his adolescent cousin Suri, who prepares for weeks his coming-of-age initiation by the tribe's distinctive cattle-jumping, a requirement to become eligible for marriage and cattle-ownership. Bruce is even allowed to train in near-permanent seclusion with the Maza and jump himself. Hamar youth schooled in town starts questioning or even rejects the tribal traditions, increasing tourism and Ethiopian government objections affect their way of life. Besides sorghum beer, the ceremony also requires a lumpy version mixed with cattle blood.