Somewhere in his book Young Nega describes entertainingly the dangers of encountering men from the Adel tribe, a tribe inhabiting the area west of Jijiga – which had to be crossed during the exodus from the town, ahead of the invading Somali army. (The Adel are Afar people, who inhabited the Adel Sultanate, in the southern extremities of the Afar region.)
The Adelmen had to prove their man-hood for the tribe, and for their future wife, by beating an enemy from another tribe in an open contest. To prove they had done this, they were required to cut off the penis from the defeated, and triumphantly carry it home. But with fewer and fewer tribal wars, life became increasingly difficult for the men, they will have to go further and further from home. In the 1970s they started to attack lonely travelers, or bus passengers that stray off the bus too far during a pee stop – the last time they will pee, for sure! Truck drivers, farm workers, nobody was safe, especially during the traditional Adel wedding months. Size matters: a boy’s penis would not do, and if there could be any doubt, the conqueror had to cut off the entire pelvis, to prove it had been a man. For obvious reasons Adelmen were not welcome on public transport anymore, so were forced to cross the desert on foot, a time-consuming business – and risking that by the time they finally got home they would be accused of having robbed a grave, instead of a man, judging by the state of the trophy!
(No pictures to illustrate this story, unfortunately…)
next: finally, Jijiga itself
This account of story is entirely baseless and solely intended to defame Afar community. Afar community never had such history of inhuman practice in the face earth. You do not know Afar at all, you are a simple awkward traveling foreigner writing on your diary everything you observe in highlight and hear as hearsay without proper scientific procedure.
Hello Habib, thanks for your reaction. So much for me being a simple awkward travelling foreigner, which may well be true, but the story about the Adel tribe, which I recounted above, comes not from me but from a country fellowman of yours, Nega Mezlekia, who wrote the book ‘Notes from the Hyena’s Belly’ (published 2000).
https://theonearmedcrab.com/horn-of-africa-reading-list/