Who is Mami Wata?

Who is Mami Wata?

Myth of mermaids is popular all around the world, but the African water spirit Mami Wata remained respected and celebrated from the time before the African nations came in contact with Europe, through the ages, and even up to today where she is venerated in West, Central, Southern Africa and the diaspora in Americas.

Is Mami Wata an African Mermaid?

Her very name is in pidgin English, a language developed to lubricate trade. Karin Miller, “African Mermaid,” ca. 2011, from the series Sea Changes. . Reestablished, revisualized, and revitalized in diaspora, Mami Wata emerged in new communities and under different guises, among them Lasirèn, Yemanja, Santa Marta la Dominadora, and Oxum.

What is a Mami Wata altar?

Mami Wata altar used by Annang Ibibio peoples. They comprise a vast and uncountable “school” of indigenous African water spirits (female and male) that have specific local names and distinctive personalities. These are honored in complex systems of beliefs and practices that may or may not be shared with the water spirit Mami Wata.

Who is Watra Mamma?

Africans transplanted by slavery to Surinam in the seventeenth century discovered there a tradition about a riverine water divinity Watra Mamma, who in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was credited with helping slaves secure their liberation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWlB7VIU59k