Mami Wata, Chief Meteorologist: A Comparative Africana Approach to Rain and Groundwater in Rural Burkina Faso

• In Event: Sacred Africana, Aquatic: Exploring Abundance and Scarcity Through Ritual in Burkina Faso, Cuba, and Haiti

Description for Program

Waterways function in Africana life as a thematic focus and a reflexive node. I join these multivalent conversations from the angle of Dagara cosmology as it has been presented to Westerners through the work of deceased Burkinabé spiritual teachers, Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé. Because the crux of American-facing Burkinabé charity primarily concerns itself with potable water scarcity, I am curious about what Somé-inspired Dagara spirituality would say about the necessity of water for life amidst aridity and water scarcity. Calling attention to the dissonance between what the Somés instituted – 501c3 organizations that raise money for rural Burkinabé water wells – and how Dagara cosmologies narrate water’s prescience, I look to the Somés’ spiritual teachings about the water element for an emic third space. Through a close reading of a Dagara story about Saa (Father Rain), I introduce an intra-Africana analytic: what if the Dagara Saa is re-imagined through the broader West African Mami Wata complex? This, I contend, holds productive ethnohermeneutic possibilities for rethinking problematic American charity in Burkina Faso.

Author

• Meredith Coleman-Tobias, Mount Holyoke College