I used to play a game with my brothers and cousins that sounded very similar to your Ethiopes. We called it Death Chasm.

We also had a dreadfully un-PC game that we played around the time of the 1986 Commonwealth Games, in which we each had an athlete character. My cousin was the Australian who (naturally) always was allowed to win. I was the British athlete who could come second or third. But we made my brother be a Fijian who was constantly mocked and always had to come last. The character’s name was Lim Bongzart.