We found the area of Omo Valley and the tribes there very interesting and unique, but we had a very bad experience with our tour and getting around the region, so here are the positives and negatives of our journey summed up.
Biggest negative:
Going to Arba Minch to look for a tour guide for Omo. As you'll see in lots of the information online, if you go overland towards the region from the capital it's Arba Minch that you reach first as the main gateway. Alternatively, if you fly you arrive in Jinka, which is further into the region and another alternative to start tours from. After our experience, whether going overland or by flight, we'd recommend everyone to start their tour in Jinka (with the overland route you can get a bus from Arba Minch to there). This is because when we reached Jinka towards the end of our trip we saw that it was much better set up to offer tours. There were a couple of tour offices, people were helpful and knowledgeable with their advice and as it's so much closer to the region you can get good deals. In Arba Minch the only way to arrange tours is for 'guides' to walk up to you on the street throughout the day to tell you about their services and from what transpired during our tour all of these individuals in Arba Minch actually work together in a network to fix the prices high and everyone then takes a cut, no matter which individual received your business.
The individuals we spoke to and would strongly suggest avoiding if you do go there and happen to meet them (although we believe they're currently the only guides in the area and as we say, wouldn't suggest you go there at all) are called Wonday, Barak, Matteus, Nairobi and Kali.
Wonday was our guide for the four day trip, although we use the word guide in the loosest sense. As we're on a budget trip the most common option of paying $100 per day to be driven around the area wasn't possible for us. That cost literally only covers you being driven by the guide, you have to pay for all your food, accommodation, entrance fees, national park access tickets etc etc additionally, so it's a very expensive few days and because the region is so big and the access isn't simple it's very very hard to see much of it in less than 4 days.
Our agreement was $50 a day for the guide, but we'd all be traveling on public transport. We do lots of trips in different countries and try to do as much by ourselves as possible but the Omo region is so remote, there are so many different daily schedules, nuances and customs across the many tribes to be aware of and the distances are so vast with little to no shared transport that trying to travel ourselves without speaking the language seemed a step too far.
The best things about the experience:
it's hard to find a more different way of life to that we know, so it's a truly eye-opening experience to see and hear about the lives of these tribes (the clothes/lack of, the body paint and animal skins, the piercings and scars, the jewellery and hair adornments, the attitudes to relationships, the typical path of their lives, the roles children play in tasks for the community etc
it's in a beautiful part of the country, so there are luscious leafy green and burnt orange landscapes surrounding you
the warmth we felt from individuals who wanted to get into the tourism industry and tell us about their lives, or help us to have the best experience possible when they could see the issues we were having with our guide were lovely
Things that detracted from the experience:
whether in a hired car or on the small supply of public transport/hitchhiking there was, the distances are so great and the visits to each of the villages so short that during the tour you're mostly paying to be in the vehicle. You're not allowed to be in the villages for more than an hour (during which time you stand there almost gawping at how they go about their day, as you can't really interact apart from a few words via your guide and they move you through what there is to see swiftly so the next tourists can enter and have their experience). There's not enough time to do more than one a day (many locals told us you should only visit tribes in the morning because by the afternoon quite a lot of alcohol has been consumed and individuals become aggressive), so your 'day' tour for each part of your trip is actually a short visit and a long drive
whilst it's not a touristy region in the sense that paths are over-run with visitors and whilst the villages and markets which are so spectacular to see are genuinely the way of life for people here it does still feel a little strange to pay to enter villages or markets to wander around looking at people and taking photos (which every individual charges you for) as it's very noticeably something they're set up to do day in and day out with a never-ending conveyor belt of tourists
there is a palpable animosity to white people from a not insignificant portion of people we met in the region. And we're not talking about people in the traditional tribes at all. The animosity actually came when we were in the contemporary cities, with us explicitly being told we were being turned away from a hotel because they don't accept white people, having dirt thrown at us as we walked down the street, having someone follow us into a restaurant to throw stones at us, being kicked by an individual as we crossed a road, having someone point at us whilst pretending to shoot a gun with their fingers and we could go on
As none of these negatives change whether you take the more expensive or cheaper option to see the region we do think it's worth considering these, alongside the positives, before deciding whether to go.
And a little more on what made our time there especially challenging - our guide.
he didn't know where the public transport left from or at what times and he was more concerned with having us stand on the side of the road to try to hitchhike (so that he didn't have to pay as much for transport himself) than to find the best method of transport for us
he didn't have knowledge of the villages, telling us information that was later discredited elsewhere or avoiding directly answering questions we had
he changed the agreed itinerary so that he could get a free bed for the night with a friend, forcing us to carry our big backpacks around in the baking sun for a whole day rather than leaving them at the accommodation as planned
he promised visits to special ceremonies and tribes, which transpired weren't actually going ahead, so we only completed half of the visits detailed in our itinerary
he lied to us about the cost of transport so that we were inadvertently also covering his costs
he had an anger issue, so that at one point when he asked if he could borrow money from us and we had to say no because we didn't have anything spare he shouted at us, threatened to call the police, stormed away from us, insulted us and accused us of not trusting him. This went on for three hours until he finally calmed down, but obviously took up a significant portion of our day as well as being scary, frustrating and completely unacceptable
later that day we also witnessed him be extremely rude to a woman who'd just left her husband's bedside in hospital - all because she couldn't help him with where car rental might be in the town, as well as him getting extremely angry with a friend and another tourist as they wouldn't agree to squeeze us in their already-full vehicle the next day (a particularly awkward situation for us as we didn't want that pressure put on them at all)
he had a drinking problem, so on the last night got so drunk that he admitted to us (whilst laughing about it) that he'd been lying and cheating us throughout the tour
when we returned back to Arba Minch and complained to Matteus, who we'd booked with because he'd shown us how official he was with his government tourism pass and talked highly of the service he offered, he apologised but said he couldn't do anything about returning any of our money because the six or seven guides in the area had already shared it out
So wow, the guides in Arba Minch don't care about making sure you have a good experience or that you may one day recommend them to your friends, instead we say to anyone and everyone - PLEASE DON'T GO TO ARBA MINCH: PASS IT ON.
Comments