Suri People and Their Body Art
Please see this page for background on this southern Ethiopia tribe and their beautiful body art. This collection is under development.
Image titles in this collection are the names of the Suri people the images feature. Captions provide translations of the names and glimpses of Suri culture. (The Suri alphabet has two special characters that are not in the English alphabet: ‘ɛ’ is a variant of ‘e’ and ‘ɔ’ is a variant of ‘o’.
4 / 10
Ngadukuwa
Dukuwa: umbrella.
Traditionally, a lip plate is a symbol of maturity and beauty for a Suri woman. The process typically starts when a girl reaches 15 or 16 years old, with a hole cut in the lower lip and stretched over several months with successively larger plugs or plates.