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Guide to Ethiopia

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Ethiopian dress is quite different from the multi-coloured traditions of people in West Africa for instance. It is also very varied according to the tribes and areas concerned.

The Amhara people form the dominant group on the high central plateau and their national clothes are basically white, whether the shawls and light blankets worn over the shoulders by the men or the white dresses and wraps worn by the ladies.

Special days see the best embroidered dresses being paraded by the ladies, and there is a great variety of colour and pattern seen in the very beautiful materials available in all the markets.

Amid the relative quietness of the national costume, the brightly coloured robes of the many priests stand out, often accompanied in public ceremonies by large embroidered parasols that sparkle in the sunshine with their gold and silver threads.

In other parts of Ethiopia, particularly the southern tribes in the Rift Valley, dress is very much more primitive and basic. The men of the Surma tribe, for example, still wear nothing apart from a cloth that is knotted over one shoulder and hangs down over the body. Scarification is a common feature of many of the lowland tribes.

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