- The Tribe follows everyday lives of rambunctious family of Hamar people
- Fixed-rig cameras and microphones installed in huts and communal space
- Cantankerous
Ayke Muko is outspoken patriarch, grandfather andstar, though first wife Kerri Bodo says he now 'looks like a baboon' - Four episode, month-long record includes two brothers negotiating to secure their younger sibling's wife and an initiation rite of cattle-leaping
Channel Four has turned its cameras on an Ethiopian tribal family for its latest fly-on-the-wall documentary.
The Tribe follows the everyday lives of a rambunctious family of Hamar people in the south of the country.
The show uses fixed-rig cameras and tiny microphones installed in four huts and communal space belonging to the family of Ayke Muko, the outspoken patriarch and grandfather.
British viewers have recently been invited to eavesdrop on the lives of soldiers, midwives and teachers, but never before on a family quite like this.
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Stars of The Tribe Kerri Bodo (left) and her husband of more than 50 years Ayke Muko (right) frequently bicker during the show
The family from the Hamar tribe, left to right: Hacho , Muko , Kerri Suma, Arrada , Kerri Bodo, Gallay, Ayke Muko, Berkee , Ilko , Rebo and Zubo
Charismatic and cantankerous Ayke is the head of the family and one of the most revered elders in the entire Hamar tribe. He has two wives, nine children and is grandfather to 16.
He has to settle disuptes among quarrelling villagers and is still a formidable force when it comes to challenging government officials, despite his failing health.
In the first episode of four to be broadcast on June 11, he calls his rowdy grandchildren 'f****ing kids' and boasts he could have a third wife.
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Married for more than 50 years to Kerri Bodo, to whom he was engaged from a young age and with whom he constantly bickers, Ayke is asked what he originally found attractive about his spouse.
The answer: ' What type of question is that? I liked her body, that’s why I wanted her – what else can I say?'
Kerri responds with: ' He had big eyes and a beautiful face…He looks like a baboon now.'
Kerri with husband Ayke . He says he 'wanted her for her body' when they were first married, while she claims he 'had a beautiful face' but now 'looks like a baboon'
Six years ago Ayke took a second younger wife, Kerri Suma. Far from feeling put out, Kerri Bodo explains how Kerri Suma helps her with the housework and childcare whilst Kerri Suma describes Kerri Bodo as, ' An older sister. She is very kind to me.'
Kerri Bodo. She says husband Ayke's second wife helps her with the housework and childcare
Ayeke's first and second sons Zubo and Arrada are tasked with securing a wife for their younger brother Muko , who has set his heart on Dami, who lives five hours walk from the family’s homestead in Wenarki.
Armed with guns to impress their future in-laws, the brothers have to finalise the frequently fraught negotiations over the crucial goat-dowry they must provide throughout the bride’s lifetime to compensate her family for the loss of their daughter.
The edited record of a month in tribal life also includes an initiation rite of cattle-leaping, andArrada acquiring a mobile phone - claiming to be the first person in the Hamar to have one.
The 40,000-strong group in the Omo region have been well studied by anthropologists and filmed by many television crews: 25 years ago they featured in Under the Sun, the Hamar Trilogy on BBC2.
The family were paid an undisclosed disturbance fee out of the £1.4million production budget and given a screening under the stars, where they cooked goats and watched on a projector screen in the homestead.
Consultant anthropologist Susanne Epple, of Addis Ababa University, told The Observer : ' I was surprised how well Hamar culture is represented. Nothing seemed staged.'
But she said of the programme's title The Tribe: 'It is old-fashioned and has a negative connotation.
'It does not represent what one sees in the films: a lovely portrait of a family and their neighbours in southern Ethiopia whose hopes and worries after all are not so different from ours.'
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