Tag Archives: Week 12

The Water Will Carry us Home

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In her short film “The Water Will Carry Us Home” Tesfaye has the audience consider the ocean as an archive and a place that holds history for descendants of the African Diaspora. Furthermore she also emphasizes the need to reach back to old rituals and traditions to find connection back to ancestors. The film opens with a couple of depictions of African deities. Amongst these is the Egyptian goddess Isis and there are all sorts of offerings being shown to us. The song seems to be a chant she is using to connect to old gods. The visual medium then moves from being live action to stop motion animation. This signals the moving into a spiritual domain where resides a god, whom i believe to be Papa Legba. This is a god known by different names across different African religions. This god is often considered to be a god that stands at crossroads and holds the keys to the past and the future. One historical fact that we ought to consider is that in these passages people from the same groups were often separated and placed amongst other people that did not have the same common language. This was done out of a need to cut communication amongst these stolen people to limit the possibility of an uprising against the ships crew. That many displaced people were still able to form connections with each other through gods that they all believed in is an act of resistance against the attempt of erasure. Through this god we are shown this origin myth. I consider it to be an origin myth because the nature of the trans-atlantic slave trade made it so that descendants of this diaspora have no exact knowledge of where they come from, from what tribes or culture and so it creates this disconnect with the past. This story then serves to memorialize those who lost their lives in this middle passage. To imagine their spirits as being saved through transformation so that they could find their way home. The narrative does compel one to examine the history that the ocean carries for so many people today. in this narrative it is particularly for descendants of enslaved peoples but let us not forget that the history of is thought to originate in the ocean as well. The shot of Tesfaye holding conch shell headset to her ears and the cable on the sand imply that the way to learn and go back to one’s roots is by listening to the stories the ocean holds. Perhaps in listening to the past we can come to know our future.

Week 12: The Water Will Carry Us

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For this week blog, I found it really interesting to the idea that through mermaids cultures are able to tell stories and as well how different cultures have different perceptions of mermaids. The stop motion film, “The Water Will Carry Us Home,” unveils the ocean’s diverse cultural perceptions and uncovers the idea of the legacy of black mermaids in contemporary society. The narrative is rooted in the harrowing tale of Africans abducted and cast overboard during the Middle Passage during a period of slavery, only to be rescued by the aquatic deities of Yoruba mythology, suggesting the sea’s duality as both a menacing unknown and a source of salvation across different cultures. This depiction challenges the idea of fear associated with the ocean, instead presenting it as a realm of protection and reverence, particularly for those cultures directly touched by its saving grace. As we have often seen that many different cultures have different meanings and ideas towards the ocean and mermaids. This representation invites viewers to contemplate the personal bonds each individual can forge with the sea, this film can aid in changing the ideals of individuals and seeing the ocean as not something to be scared of but something we should be curious about; and as a source of healing that has recently been seen in society as the ocean being a place that can provide peace and tranquillity. So in the sense of the class, this film aids in having a different point of view in the face of the ongoing environmental crisis, the film provides a new idea, suggesting that a personal and communal appreciation for the ocean could bridge the gap we’ve placed between ourselves and the aquatic world, encouraging a more harmonious interaction with water and all it has to offer, and how it can be used to better our everyday life and our planet.

Week 12: The Sea Remembers

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One thing I found really interesting in Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea Is History” is the notion he introduces that, as humanity developed and began spreading its territory on land, the sea remains this immovable force that is ever present throughout all these eras of turbulence. It seems to act primarily as an observer, only stepping in to swallow that which gets lost in it. One line from the poem that got me to read and reread it a couple of times over reads as such,

“Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,” (Walcott, lines 26-29)

These lines gave me chills.

It paints the picture of the ocean being used as a macabre means of waste disposal. We’ve seen the ocean (or any body of water, at that) being used as a means of body disposal in countless movies, TV shows, books, etc. – like the old Mobster term “sleeping with the fishes”. The act of throwing a body in water to sweep it under the rug and leave it somewhere where it won’t be traced is a familiar yet sinister practice to us surface beings. The poem does a good job of reminding us that discarding something in the ocean doesn’t erase it from existence. The ocean remembers. It holds onto our waste like a ledger mapping the geological reaches of our control and depravity. The next bit about the barbecued cattle and the comparison between rib bones and palm leaves just filled my head with images of shapes along the coast, dripping with seafoam and obscured by a marine layer. The poem is a very good read.

Week 12: Animism and Ancestral Worship

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Something that struck me about the portrayal of Omambala is how caring and maternal she and the mermaids she creates are. In a lot of folklore surrounding mermaids and water spirits, these spirits tend to be flighty and capricious, erring on the side of malicious towards humans. You wouldn’t trust these spirits to protect you or your watercraft and you’re probably more likely to believe that they’d drown you if they fell in.

With Omambala, her powers are used to transform the pregnant women tossed overboard from the slave ship into mermaids with the ability to swim and survive in their water, even extending that transformation to their unborn children. She manipulates the weather to stop the slave ships from sailing to their destinations. She watches over the slaves stored at the bottom of the ship when the weather is not enough to stop the traders. This portrayal of an ancestral water spirit reflects not just animistic but ancestral worship, as well. Water as the source of all life makes the ocean everyone’s ancestor. Ancestral worship involves the belief that our ancestors watch over and take care of us.

This class taught us to view the ocean not just as a lifeless road for ships or a blacktop for watersports, but as a living being with a history of its own. This stop-motion animation short invites us to not only see the ocean as a living being but as a family member or a common ancestor that connects and takes care of us all.

Week 12: Omambala: The Water Spirit

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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.