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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

African water symbolism and its consequences

Water is a source of life, an element of regeneration and purification. It is also the origin of the world.There are innumerable symbolic meanings attached to water in the traditions and cultures of the black continent.

Water can cure, rejuvenate or even kill since it can "bring life out of death and bring death to life". As proof of its power it is sufficient to consider the water that is used by healers, witchdoctors or those who cast spells. As a vehicle of sanctity, water is used in various divinatory techniques such as hydromancy.

The great poet Birago Diop wrote: "Those who are dead never left.../They are in the trickling of water, /They are in sleeping water./The dead are not dead/Hear more often/The murmur of things, not people/Hear the voice of water (16)."

But do the African poet and the Greek and French philosophers speak of the same death?

According to Gaston Bachelard, for Heraclitus of Ephesus, death is water: "It is death for the soul to become water (17)". And Bachelard adds, "a death that sweeps us away with the current, like the current".

Iba Ndiaye Diadji18 ventures into ontology when he speaks of "the aquatic nature of the African being".

Joseph Ki-Zerbo, the great African sage, provides valuable hints for an understanding of the symbolism of water: "In my native language, the saying goes that there is more in water than crocodiles." What is meant is that reality is complex, not just because thousands of beasts less spectacular than the crocodile are present in water, but also because it touches upon what is not visible, life for example. In the origin myths, in Africa and elsewhere, water is always present. Remember the'God of Water' of the Dogon:'The vital force of the earth is water. God moulded the earth with water; he made blood with water. Even the stones contain that force'.The origin myths of people are frequently associated with water:rivers, lakes and wells. In ancient Ghana, the Ouagadou legend speaks of a totem-ancestor of the royal family, the Serpent God, to whom sacrifices were made and who was the guardian of the well and the protector of fecundity. Were he to be exterminated, drought would follow. The early episodes of the life of a people are marked by the crossing of rivers by miraculous means... The Baule migrated from Ashanti (Ghana) to their present home (Côte d'Ivoire) by crossing the Comoé. The first kings of Ségou owe their name (Coulibaly) to being stopped by a river as they fled from their enemies, and were only able to escape when a giant catfish spread itself like a living bridge from one bank of the river to the other, so that the fugitives were able to cross the river without a canoe ("Couloubaly" in the Bambara language). In Africa, these legends reflect actual facts as'saharisation' or the absence of water underline its importance. Water is part of the balance of ecological, economic, social and political forces since it acts in three realms (mineral, vegetable, animal) creating time spaces which are models, or even structural templates of historical development. For example, where aridity takes the upper hand, camels will be introduced and act as the gateway to an original social and historical system. Sutton described the'aquatic civilisations' of eastern Africa's prehistoric period, but the dynamics of water can lead to regression".

A more detailed examination reveals that the Bambara19 believe that the creation of the world began when a heavy mass, Pemba, swirled to the ground, thus giving birth to earth; at the same time a portion of spiritual force arose so that Faro constructed the sky. It then falls to earth, in the form of water and brings life there, aquatic animals in particular. Man was aquatic in the beginning, and gave birth to the Bozo fishermen who were the first humans.

In the cosmogony of the Mali Dogons, water is seed of divine origin and green in colour. It fertilises the earth to produce extraordinary green twins, half man and half serpent.

Just like the Bambara, "the Dogon assimilate water, the fecundating seed, to light and speech and to the Word, the generator. Dry water and dry speech express thought, that is human and divine potentiality. They attribute the genesis of the world to the supreme Ouranian god Amma, when he created his double Nommo", writes Camille Talkeu Tounounga (20). Nommo is a spirit endowed with mysterious and extraordinary powers, some of them rather frightening.He is the object of absolute human veneration, since he can decide if the rains will come and ensure prosperity or he can bring about drought and suffering, if men unwisely neglect him.

In the 1930s, a Dogon sage explained to the ethnologist Marcel Griaule, a specialist on Mali, that "behind what looked like chance happenings, there was a single ordered structure, a concept of the world which is the origin of all things": when God, Nommo, couples with the Earth, "he spills his seed which is none other than water. This universal vital force takes on the form of a humidity which impregnates every part of the physical world. Women", adds the Dogon sage, "are our aqueduct. Without them, water would woman are linked. On the high plateaux of Bandiagra, in Mali, the whole corpus of myths, beliefs, perceptions of the sacred, social behaviours and division of work give to women the task of making sure that water -in the final analysis: life- is provided to the whole community (21)."

For the Masai of Kenya, people of the rains, Engai Narok, black god of rain, is benevolent, but Engai Nanyoke, red god, is cruel, because rain can be either beneficial or destructive. The Red God often takes on the appearance of Vitchua, a particularly fierce lion with a magnificent mane.The Warrior among Warriors alone is capable of killing him and returning to the village with his superb mane: rain then falls in abundance and life resumes.

The devotion of the Masai to Engai, the god of rain, leads them to respect every form of life. For this reason, they breed cattle and do not force the earth by cultivating it, which is reminiscent of the Indian doctrine of non-violence (ahimsa) and the Bishnoi practices in the Rajasthan desert, whose religion dating back to the 15th century sanctifies the environment -"show people the light" (Jamsagar)- by insistence on the numerous links between animals, plants and the environment. As they scrupulously respect these ecological principles, the Bishnoi live without major hardship in a torrid climate where temperatures often reach 50° C and rainfall is less than 60 cms a year. They survived the terrible droughts of the 80s that were so harmful to other ethnic groups of Rajasthan (22). In 1988, the Indian federal government officially gave them a certificate recognising their action in favour of the environment.

(16) For Eluard, "l'eau est un néant substantiel" says Bachelard quoting these two sublime verses: "J'étais comme un bateau coulant dans l'eau fermée, Comme un mort je n'avais qu'un unique élément."

(17) Gaston Bachelard, "L'eau et les rêves", Librairie José Corti, Paris, 1942

(18) Iba Ndiaye Diadji, "From "water-life" to "water-death" or the foundations of African artistic creation, yesterday to tomorrow" consulted on March 28, 2004 at http://www.olats.org

(19) Joseph Ki - Zerbo, "Compagnons du Soleil", La Découverte/UNESCO, Paris, 1992.

(20) Jean-Paul Gandin (Summary by), "La conquête de l'eau", Dossier for debate n° 44, Fondation pour le progrès de l'homme, Paris, 1995.

(21) Domenico Luciani, "Des mythes à la réalité", Manière de voir n° 65, September - October 2002, p.24 - 27. As noted by Jacques Berque "In the Mandingo culture, men are in charge of dry cropping and their wives have the more burdensome task of irrigated farming." ("L'Orient second", Gallimard, Paris, 1970)

(22) Michel Tobias, "Desert survival by the book", New Scientist, 17 December, 1988, p.29 - 31.