The child was "mingi" â cursed, according to their ancient superstitions. With every breath, they believed, the boy was beckoning an evil spirit into their village.
Murderous though it was, the decision to kill the boy was the easy part. It was the sacrifice of one infant for the good of the entire tribe â a rite that some of the elders had witnessed hundreds of times throughout their lives in Ethiopia's remote Omo River Valley.
The tribe's leaders were less certain of what they should do about the boy's twin brother, who had died of sickness shortly after birth. After some debate, including a pensive examination of a goat's intestines, they decided the dead child must have been mingi, too.
So they dug up the corpse, bound it to the living boy, paddled a canoe into the center of the Omo River and threw them both into the murky brown water.
That was five years ago â a time before many outside of this isolated basin had ever heard of mingi.
Today, nudged out of acquiescence by a slow-growing global condemnation of the ritualistic infanticide practiced by the Kara, Banna and Hamar tribes of southern Ethiopia, regional government officials have begun to take action â threatening prison for those complicit in mingi killings.
Meanwhile, a small band of Banna Christians has taken it upon itself to give sanctuary to the mingi children of their tribe; an enlightenment among some young and educated tribesmen of the Kara has spawned an orphanage for the condemned; and global Samaritans, drawn by the plights of these defenseless children, have offered money and adoptive homes.
The combined efforts have saved scores of children.
But none of the interventions has brought an end to the deep fear that stokes the slaughter. And so it is estimated by some government officials, rescue workers and village elders that hundreds of children are still being killed each year, by drowning, suffocation and deliberate starvation.
'All the people'
Bona Shapo steers a dugout canoe through crocodile-infested waters, guiding the craft ashore where the Omo River bends at the bottom of a crumbling precipice near the tiny stick-and-thatch village of Korcho.
The sun is setting into the ravine. Across the river, a troop of colobus monkeys whoops and howls, stirring a flock of gangly marabou storks from their perches on a stand of flat-topped acacia trees.
"This is where they do it," says Bona, who stood upon these same muddy banks on the day the twin boys were thrown into the river. "Sometimes they take the babies out in a boat. Other times, they just take them to the edge of the water and throw them in."
The mingi rites of the Kara are slightly different from those of the Banna, which are, in turn, different from the Hamar. But common among all is a profound fear of what might happen if the killings were to stop.
There has been little academic scholarship on the subject, but some observers have speculated that it might have started many generations ago as a way to purge people who are more likely to become a burden or who cannot contribute to the propagation of their people. That might explain why children who break a tooth or injure their genitals are among those singled out for death. Others are killed because they are born out of wedlock or to married parents who have not completed a ceremony announcing their intention to have children â a brutal enforcement, perhaps, of the deep-rooted duty that members have to the tribe first, their family second.
As far as the Kara elders are concerned, these rules are as old and unyielding as the Omo River â and every bit as crucial to their survival. Allowing a mingi child to live among the Kara, they believe, could cause the rains to stop falling and the sun to grow hotter.
"If they have the mingi, there will be no water, no food, no cattle," Bona says. "But when they throw the baby away, everything is good again."
Elders bitterly recall times in which their sympathy for mingi children prevailed over their fear. They believe that heedlessness cost the tribe most of its cattle and many of its members. Today, Kara leaders say, a more respectful adherence to the brutal obligations of their beliefs has allowed their tribe to thrive.
"So yes, it is sad, but we are thinking about the village, the family, all the people," Bona says. "We tell the parents, 'don't cry for your baby, because you will save everyone. You can always make another baby.' "
'No other option'
She wasn't permitted to nurse him, hold him or even see him. But Erma Ayeli still clings to an image of the baby she lost â fantasy though it may be.
"I think he must have been a beautiful boy," Erma says as she rests on a pile of sticks, surrounded by a playful mob of younger children. "I wanted to keep him."
Her chin sinks into the tornado of colorful beads draped around her neck.
Apparently sensing her sorrow, a young boy rests his half-shorn head playfully on her lap. Erma tugs at his ear, smiles and reclaims her composure.
She still mourns. But she does not question why her son was killed. "There was no other option," she says.
Sex outside of the confines of marriage is acceptable among the Kara. But if a woman becomes pregnant before participating in a marriage ceremony, her child is considered "kumbaso," a mingi curse that occurs when parents fail to perform the appropriate series of rites before conceiving. Erma cannot marry, though, until her older sister has first been wed.
Her hands fall to her swollen stomach; she is pregnant once again.
"It was an accident," she laments as she rubs her bare waist. "I don't want to lose this baby, too."
There is a potion she can take; the village medicine man can mix a concoction of roots and herbs that will make her sick and might cause her body to reject her pregnancy, taking her baby's life before others can take it from her.
Many women choose this path. Erma won't. Because this time, at least, she has some reason to hope that her child might be spared a violent death. Far away from her village, she has heard, there is an orphanage for mingi babies. She has pleaded with village leaders to let her child go there.
Either way, though, she won't be allowed to see her baby. Once again, she'll be left to dream about what her child might look like.
"This time, I think, I might have a girl," Erma says.
Again, her head hangs low. Again, the boy next to her drops his own head into her lap, glancing up with a wry smile.
This time, though, Erma doesn't smile back. She gently strokes his smooth brown cheek.
'This was our culture'
They have taken her tribal clothes. Her beads, her animal skins and her jewelry have been replaced by a tattered shirt and loose-fitting skirt. In that and most other visible regards, Mashi Lamo is indistinguishable from the other inmates at the Jinka Prison Institute.
Yet everyone in this ragtag penitentiary knows who she is. "The mingi mother," says one guard, a woman whose crisply pressed khaki uniform seems to stand out in defiance of this dirty, dilapidated jail, cut into a hillside in the South Omo region's administrative capital. "Yes, we all know what happened to her. It is very sad."
It is not typical for Kara mothers to be asked to kill their own mingi children â and none are known to have done it of their own volition. In any case, fellow Kara say Mashi could not have killed her baby; she was far too weak after the birth to have done such a thing. It was other women who took the child away, they say.
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