Far-off museum to save an Ethiopian tribe's soul

Women jump up in their fluffy orange cotton skirts, waggling their shoulders at men who are swift to join the dance, sporting white feathers in their hair and shepherd's crooks in their hands.

This tribal dance pays tribute to the heroes of the small Konso community, an ethnic group which has lived for 700 years in a remote region of southeast Ethiopia 600 kilometres (375 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.

The fete was organised to celebrate the inauguration in December of a local museum dedicated to Konso culture, which will above all serve to preserve the Waka, or funeral steles in carved wood that have long been placed on the tombs of Konso clan chiefs. These rare carvings have long been easy prey for arts traffickers and tomb raiders without scruples who sell them abroad for a few thousand euros (dollars) apiece.

Ethiopian customs agents have since 1996 impounded more than 200 of the statues, often the size of a man, but no system of conservation was put in place until a French ambassador went to the Konso region.

"It was pure chance, I was on my way back with colleagues from a paleontological site," said Stephane Gompertz, the former ambassador who is now the Africa director at the French foreign ministry.

AFP