Mami Wata
Mami Wata ( Pidgin - English for "mother of water"), also Mammy Water , is an African water spirit who is revered in West , South and Central Africa as well as the African diaspora in the Caribbean . Mostly Mami Wata is portrayed in female, but occasionally also in male form.
Origin and Distribution
Before Europeans first arrived in Africa, water cults were widespread there in complex, mostly feminine forms. The belief in Mami Wata probably spread from Nigeria to many countries in West Africa. It is believed that the cult originated in the Cross River area in southeastern Nigeria. The ethnologist Barbara Paxson, on the other hand, locates Mami Wata's homeland in Latin America . According to one of their theories, the worship of the supposedly African spirit is a modification of the so-called Watur-Mama cult. This cult was practiced by African slaves as early as 1750 in what was then the Dutch colony of Suriname . The ritual acts - possession dances and sacrificial rituals - were carried out by the abductees at that time in much the same way as the Mami Wata followers did about 150 years later. According to Paxson, the Watur-Mama belief, which through some modifications had become the Mami-Wata cult, reached Africa when the Surinamese slaves emigrated to the homeland of their ancestors after their liberation in 1863. The art historians Jill Salmons and Henry Drewal propose a similar interpretation. The ethnologist Sabine Jell-Bahlsen and the Nigerian authors Chinua Achebe , Christie Achebe and Flora Nwapa , on the other hand, refer to the local African origins of water deities, which because of their different African names for foreigners in Pidgin English as Mammywater, Mami Wata, Mammy Water, Mammmywota etc. . are designated.
Representations can be found almost everywhere between Senegal and Nigeria. Because of their predominantly fair-skinned and mermaid-like shape, there is a lot in science. a. the assumption that the figure of Mami Wada is based on the African manatee . This is also supported by the fact that in many areas of this region it is common to call these animals Mami Wata. Another hypothesis ascribes their mermaid-like and fair-skinned appearance to the influence of the Europeans, because mermaids were often incorporated as figureheads on the ships of the (slave) traders and stories about these beings were popular among the seafarers.
Overall, ideas about the appearance and gender of the mind differ from ethnicity to ethnicity. In many areas of West and Central Africa, particularly attractive women are known as Mami Wata. With the Liberian Kpelle, however, Mami Wata is sometimes a male, sometimes a female spirit.
Appearance
Most Mami Wata worshipers imagine the mermaid-like creature as a woman with hair combed back, unnaturally long, the hair color varying. In West Africa, Mami Wata followers worship the hybrid creature with a human upper body and a fish tail in an obsession cult. Similar to the element water, the spirit is characterized by an ambivalent character that contains both healing and life-giving, but also destructive and harmful aspects. Comparable to the sirens of Greek mythology , Mami Wata is described in stories as an extremely attractive woman who seduces the chosen with calls and all sorts of precious gifts. However, it also has a different face. Mami Wata is feared in many places as the cause of various ailments, such as illnesses. In some shrines in Benin , Mami Wata is worshiped together with the slave spirit Tchamba .
literature
- Chinwe (Christie) Achebe: The World of the Ogbanje. Fourth Dimension Publishers, Enugu 1986, ISBN 978-156-239-0 .
- Gert Chesi : Voodoo in Africa - people under the spell of the gods. Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck 2003, ISBN 3-85218-433-9 .
- Henry John Drewal: Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in Africa. In: TDR (1988-), Vol. 32, No. 2, Sommer 1988, pp. 160-185
- Sabine Jell-Bahlsen: The Water Goddess in Igbo Cosmology. Ogbuide of Oguta Lake. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ 2008, ISBN 978-1-59221-483-9 .
- Sabine Jell-Bahlsen, Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria. (video, 1989). IMF & www.der.org 2009.
- Flora Nwapa: Mammywater. Tana Press, Enugu 1978, OCLC 630797180 .
- Barbara Paxon: Mammy Water: New World Origins? In: Baessler Archive NF 31, 1983, pp. 407-446.
- Tobias Wendl: Mami Wata or a cult between cultures . Lit-Verlag, Münster / Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-89473-120-6 .
