The historical evocation of American cowboys—razor burned and rugged cow people, clad in rusty spurs, saddle strung, roping and herding horned beasts across wild plains—along with the modern take on cowboys as gay men from Montana who can’t quit each other, both take the backseat in the bus of badassery so that the Hamar people of Southern Ethiopia can sit shotgun next to the drunk driver and dare him to drive the creaking clunker off a cliff.

The Hamar are a cow people to end all cow people. If your manhood is calculated as a comparison, stop reading here if you ever want to feel tougher than a wailing preschooler again. The Hamar people of Southern Ethiopia are arguably the most fiercely hardcore cow people of bovine badassery and animal wrangling ever to sidestep a cowpie and say to the world, “We are cow people!”

If American cowboys had a love affair with their beasts, then the Hamar people are having a life long orgy with theirs. In Hamar culture, each man has three names: a human name, a goat name, and a cow name. Since cows are the crux of their culture, their cow name is the most hallowed of the three (and their goat name likely the one employed when someone’s sexual orientation is being questioned).

A Cow People To Be Reckoned With

Historically, Hamar have spent so much time musing about cows that their language has 27 words that describe the outward appearance of cow. Men within a Hamar tribe are called maza, which means, “accomplished one.” Before a man can be a man—marry, own cattle, and have children—he must fulfill the requirements of The Cow Jumping Ceremony.

This rite of passage takes place over the course of several days. It begins similar to most Western university rites of passage—everyone in the village

feasts and gets wasted off of sorghum beer. But unlike the West, where the man-in-the-making picks up a Sharpie and draws penises on the faces of his fallen comrades, a Hamar participant will pick up a switch. Then the women in his family—mother and grandmother included—will start verbally taunting their male relative. He will respond by mercilessly beating his mother and sisters with the switch, while they plead for more.

Outside of making an oilfield barracks seem like a safe place to send daughters, this part of the ceremony serves an important purpose in Hamar society. Women treasure these scars, which are more than decorative. They serve as a reminder to the men who inflicted them that they owe their female relatives some serious favors—for life.

If a male relative balks when a woman in his family asks him to take out the trash or deal with the pack rabid dogs running amuck outside, all she needs to do is show him her scars and say something like “Hey Biruk, remember that time with the switch when you beat the living. . .” and Biruk will interrupt her and do whatever has been asked of him.

When the government of Ethiopia made overtures to nix the beat-your-female-family-members part of ceremony, it was the women of the Hamar who insisted it remain. It is tempting to make a value judgment here, but recall that women in our culture surgically remove fat from their gut and inject it in their ass with the same goal of procuring life-long favors from men.

The cow ceremony itself consists of a dozen or so cows and castrated bulls being lined up—if you’ve been around cows then you know that this in itself is a daunting challenge for any cow people and persons.

When the cows are in place, the initiated, after two days of drinking, strips naked and is rubbed by his relatives with cow dung to make him more slippery, increasing his chance of failure. His task is similar to those found in the Japanese game show MXC—He must jump from cow to cow without missing one or falling.  Once completed, depending on the village, he will have to repeat this several times.

It is a do or do not deal. There are no second chances. In addition to having to wait until the next Cow Jumping Cremony to try to become a man, the women in his family will pick up switches and beat the shit out of him. Because, you know, they just got beat for nothing now and so are going to make sure that Biruk has the worst hangover of his god damned life tomorrow for that.

For those who complete the ceremony, they are now maza—accomplished men. They can marry as many women as they can support, own cows, and for the rest of their lives will be recognized as the badasses they are. As one Hamar surely said after successfully completing the ceremony, “Waxaan ahay nin ugu badass weligaa ay ku noolaadaan.” Amen brother.