Rivers and Streams

Rivers and streams are linked to the theme of water, which, as the primordial matter of the universe, plays a central role in African understanding of the source of life.

All over Africa, rivers, streams, creeks, lakes, and lagoons are regarded as the habitat of deities and ancestors. Thus, they are viewed as the sacred space of spirits and are subsequently treated with great reverence.

The sacred nature of rivers and streams is explicated in various creation myths. In Yoruba cosmology, for instance, in the beginning was Olodumare the supreme God who sent the orishas (divinities), under the supervision of Obatala, to create the world from the primordial watery matter. After the creation of the world, the spirits did not return to the sky. It is believed that the 400 orishas that created the world entered the Earth's crust instead and transformed themselves into rivers, trees, and mountains. Hence, in the Yoruba pantheon, Olokun is venerated as the divinity of the Ocean, Olosa as the divinity of the lagoon. Yemoja (Yemonja), the most prominent of the river divinities among the Yoruba, for example, is not only the mother of numerous river deities, but also the ruler of the Ogun River in Abeokuta. She is also the mother of fish and the giver of children. Women therefore pray to her for children, with offerings of yams and fowls. Other prominent river goddesses include Oya, the goddess of the Niger River, who is believed to be the companion or one of the wives of Shango, the god of thunder. She is so fierce and terrible that no one can look on her. Oya is often identified with the wind that blows when no rain follows. Among the Baluba of the Congo, Lake Boya (near Kabongo) is said to have suddenly and mysteriously sprung from the Earth and is regarded by the Luba kings as a special abode of the ancestral spirits. No king of the Luba empire could be installed without being confirmed by the Boya spirits through royal diviners. Moreover, for the Baluba, the spirits reside in some special sections of rivers, especially the source, where two rivers meet or fall into a sea or lake, and in the region of waterfalls.

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, Uhammiri (or Ogbuide), the goddess of Ugwuta Lake, plays a crucial role in people's lives because her priests and priestesses help people afflicted with infertility, gynecological problems, mental illness, repeated deaths of children, and many other misfortunes.

The African religious vision of rivers, streams, lakes, rain, mountains, and the Earth points to the centrality of “Ecospirituality” in African theology. This “spirituality of environment” goes beyond a mere sentimental environmentalism.

In the Baluba version of African cosmology, humans and deities are rivers, streams, lakes, and rain. Indeed, an ontological vital force emanates from Shakapanga the creator and flows through humans and nature through water and human blood.

This spirituality of rivers and streams carries with it a fundamental ethical principle against pollution of the environment because ultimately any act of pollution affects humans and the gods. In the African religious worldview, the pollution of the environment is not merely physical, but a spiritual impurity that jeopardizes one's ability to join the village of the ancestors.

...