The Chara also known as the Tsara are a people group of

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. They form a part of the Gimira peoples of Ethiopia and live in the Kaffa Highlands, and the Debub Omo area. Their three main villages are Geba a meša, Buna Anta, and Kumba, Ethiopia and they practise subsistence

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

ing and hold to a syncretic religion of

Orthodox Christianity Orthodoxy (from Ancient Greek, Greek: ) is adherence to correct or accepted creeds, especially in religion. Orthodoxy within Christianity refers to acceptance of the doctrines defined by various creeds and ecumenical councils in Late antiquity, A ...

with tribal practices. The Chara people speak their own

Chara language Chara (alternatively Ciara or C’ara) is an Afro-Asiatic language of the North Omotic variety spoken in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region of Ethiopia by 13,000 people. Status Chara is geographically situated to the sou ...

a member of the

Omotic Language The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region. The Ge'ez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have com ...

group, which is

linguistically Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

similar to Mela and the numerically much larger Wolaytta both of which many Chara also speak. (Se
Ethiopian language map
. The number of Chara have been decimated due to

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

and war and are estimated to number between 16,500 and 6,984 (1994 census) Ethiopia
at Country Guides and Profiles. people.

References

Ethnic groups in Ethiopia Omotic-speaking peoples {{ethiopia-ethno-group-stub