Travel through the Omo River valley

The ethnical groups of the riverside Omo and their cultures are on the verge of extinction, because of a big project in the upper riverside seriously threatens them. In the project they plan on building a hydroelectric power plant, because of the last hydroelectric power plant Gibe III, which is the third biggest hydroelectric power plant in Africa. The estimate says that almost half a million tribe inhabitants of the Omo River and Turkana Lake are going to be ecologically totally annihilated. As devastating as the power plants are, the intensive watering of the cotton farms threatens them as well. These are funded by the capitals of the abroad-located multinational corporations and are grown right on the land of these, by the river living, inhabitants.   Most of the tribes living in the Omo valley live in very remote places and most of the time even getting to these places is a masterpiece on its own. Mud, gravel, bad constructed roads, the River Omo without any bridges and sometimes unfriendly tribespeople, are sometimes unbridgeable problems to conquer. The problems even get worse, if you have to carry with you very valuable equipment and fragile studio photography equipment, as we did with Katja.

  Written by Arne Hodalič, photo Arne Hodalič and Katja Bidovec