Spirit in the Water
Mami Wata or Mummy Water or Mammy Water or Mama Wota or La Sirène or Mae d’Agua, she comes with many names. Mami Wata is known as an African deity praised for her beauty. She is as seductive as she is dangerous. A lot know her as a “capitalist” deity. Tribute is paid to the diety by some people. They believe she can bring good or bad fortune in the form of money. This relationship between currency and water makes sense. Her persona developed between the 15th and 20th centuries, as Africa became more present in the global trade she has different styles, too. The diety shows herself to some humans as a sisterhood.
The spirit of the waters is nurturing but aggressive, instills fear with love that holds, and ripples, allied with the moon, and is, of course, a she.
The African Deity, Mother of the Waters (Mami Wata)
From her eyes flow a river of love and the salt turns her tears into the sea. Like the oceans, like the rivers, she appears in many guises. “Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas” at the National Museum of African Art is an exhibition about one of them, the one with the snakes. It is also about her beauty. She is often at her mirror. Her hair flows as the river flows, and she combs it as the waves comb the surface of the sea.
Mami Wata, a Myth?
Not everyone believes in her. Certain Christians dread her. Kwame Akoto, one of these (who signs his work “Almighty God,” and paints in Kumasi, Ghana) sees her on the wrong side of the God vs. Satan battle. “Do not go to Maame Water. She is a bad spirit, she would spit in your eyes leaving you blind.” The tragedy and pain is what his art advises, and it isn’t hard to see what it is he’s getting at. Dangerous allurements — paganism, voodoo, sex — shimmer in her wake.
You don’t have to be a polytheist to acknowledge her ubiquity. You just have to look around.
