The Coronation

In the remote reaches of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, I met this young Suri boy standing barefoot in the warm mud. He couldn’t have been older than twelve, but something in his posture already hinted at the role he’d one day take on within his community. His gaze was steady, lowered, as if I’d just coronated him with a crown of flowers.

His face was painted in streaks of white, rust, and ash-black and a blend of pigments collected from the nearby river. Among the Suri, body painting is a tradition rooted in identity and ceremony, particularly in preparation for donga, a ritual stick-fighting event that marks courage and physical skill among young men. The designs vary and carry no fixed meaning, but they are an expression of pride, beauty, and strength.

That day had started with rain, and the humid air was thick by afternoon. We’d ducked under a tree for shade while the village moved around us, women grinding grain, children calling out as they played, the sounds that makes this portrait feel even more grounded in their everyday life.

The Suri, like many in the Omo, carry their culture not in museums or books, but on their skin, in the stories of elders, and in small gestures like this one. This boy may not have seen himself as symbolic, but in that moment, he felt like a bridge between childhood and adulthood, old tradition and the present.