The stop motion video titled The Water will Carry us Home was very pleasant to watch; out of all of the literature we have read and videos we have watched this one felt the most familiar in terms of what I’m used to seeing when speaking about mermaids or folktales. The video featured a water spirit Omambala and the quote that, “the water spirit Omambala brought us here. The water spirit Omambala will carry us home.” We are then shown the story of Omambala and how she came to save black slaves that were traveling on a ship to be sold off. There were slaves thrown overboard, mainly pregnant women, for an unknown reason. They were then saved by Omambala and turned into mermaids and their babies were born from clam shells.

After watching the video I still had questions so I googled who Omambala was and found the term Orisha which means Devine spirit in Yoruba religion. After learning that the video made a lot of sense as we essentially viewed the origin story of their main religious figure. Yoruba is one of the largest ethic groups in Nigeria. Now as far as why water or a water spirit became the focal point of their religion I am still unsure of. This video also sort of reminded me of Avatar and their relationship with the Eywa, the “All-Mother”. The Eywa is essentially the entire consciousness of Pandora, it is Pandora. This is why the Na’vi people are so interconnected with their environment as they respect their land and treat it with honor as they are harvesting a good relationship with the Eywa. Although the Na’vi people are fictional and blue, I do believe there are some clear connections with them and the Yorubian people as they both worship a spirit of nature, understanding the value of environment and how we as people are interconnected to it. It shows how the land and water all carry history of people, the environment, and how we have interacted with each other throughout time. The water and land will be here when we are not, just as it was before humans, and it will be able to tell the tales of our time.