The Omo River, flowing 621 miles from Ethiopia’s Shewan Highlands to Kenya’s Lake Turkana, creates an inland drainage basin of about 56,371 square miles. It is a lifeline for half a million people with little political power but who have been completely self-sustaining for 6000 years, due to their practice of flood-recession agriculture. Unlike others in the arid regions of southern Ethiopia, the Omo River Valley tribes have not needed any food aid during long drought periods, due to the grains grown following the months of annual floods. But these people may soon be standing in those food-aid lines if a proposed cascade of massive hydro-dams is built on the Gibe River upstream tributary.