Africa: Definition from Answers.com Mobile

Africa

Sahara, The West Coast, East and South Africa, Madagascar

Mythologies abound in Africa. Tribes possess their own traditions, and even where they share a language with their neighbours, like the Bantu-speakers of East and South Africa, it is the diversity of local belief that surprises rather than the evidence of a common heritage. Factors making for this mythological variety are several. First, there is the size of the continent itself, along with the accompanying range of climate. Some tribes wander the open plains, herding cattle and hunting game; others raise crops or fertile riverside clearings amid dense equatorial jungle: these peoples would find the habitat of the Bushmen unendurable. Once the sole inhabitants of the area south of the Zambezi River, the Bushmen were decimated by incoming Bantu tribesmen and by later white settlers, until today surviving tribes eke out a living on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert. A second factor, therefore, is the migration of peoples, an historical process about which we are only dimly aware. Recorded history starts late in Africa so that inferences have to be drawn from oral tradition, supplemented where possible by information collected in the journals of travellers and explorers. The last factor to be taken into account is the presence of separate ethnic groups. North of the immense Sahara Desert this situation is transparent in the relation of the indigenous Berbers and their Arab conquerors. Only in the mountainous interior of Algeria and Morocco are vestiges of the old Berber culture preserved. Nevertheless, West Africa is the part of the continent with the greatest concentration of different peoples, since between the Senegal River and the headwaters of the Congo River there are 2,000 known languages and dialects.

Almost all African peoples believe in a supreme god who is omniscient and omnipresent. The Akan of Ghana refer to this deity as Brekyirihunuade, ‘he who knows and sees all’, while the Zulu of South Africa simply call him ‘the wise one’, uKqili. God's ‘great eye’, according to the Ganda people of Uganda, keeps perpetual watch everywhere and at all times: it never blinks. Nothing can be hidden, assert the Yoruba of Nigeria, because his vision includes ‘both the inside and outside of man’. A sky god, the deity is thought of as father, mother, grandfather, elder, supreme ancestor, friend, and companion. The Koma of Ethiopia, a tribe which sacrifices dogs—their king eating the tail at an annual reinvestiture—call the sky ‘god's belly’. When lightning strikes cattle, the Zulu say that uKqili ‘has slaughtered for himself among his own food … he is hungry; he kills for himself.’ Thunder, on the other hand, is represented sometimes as the god at play. Though looked upon generally as benevolent, the ways of the sky god are inscrutable, and he also sends men their ills. The Akamba of Kenya suppose Asa, ‘the father’, to have said, ‘It is I who made the people; whom I love, he will thrive; and whom I refuse, he will die.’ Yet the Herero of South-west Africa simply explain death as god calling away old people.

A myth current in Liberia offers a quite different explanation for the origin of mortality. Once Sno-Nysoa, the creator god, sent his four sons into the world. He wished them to return, but they wanted to stay, and Earth, too, tried to keep them. Then Sno-Nysoa used his power and took his sons back to heaven. When they could not wake up in the morning, he said to Earth: ‘I have called them home. I leave their bodies with you.’ Since that time Sno-Nysoa has used his power to take men away from the world, and the way to the deceased is blocked, on account of the Earth's attempt to keep the divine children. Before Sno-Nysoa and the Earth quarrelled, however, sickness, suffering, and death were unknown. Mankind considered what should be done. The result was that a cat was sent to the medicine-man, to fetch a remedy which should cure the sick and awake the dead. On the way back, the cat, putting the medicine on the stump of a tree, took a bath in a river. Then she forgot about her errand. So they sent the cat to look for the medicine, but she did not find it, and went back to the medicine-man again. He was angered at the cat's carelessness, and cursed it roundly. Moreover, he said that ‘thereafter, though a tree be cut, if the stump remain, the tree will grow again; but when men die, it will be the end.’

The wrath of the medicine-man is crucial. He is the intermediary between god and man. Africans, like most other peoples, feel that they cannot or should not approach divinity alone or directly, and must do so through the mediation of special persons. Among the Maasai of East Africa, for instance, the medicine-men, or iloibonok, come from one clan and trace their hereditary powers back for ten generations to the first who fell, full-grown, from the sky. While all Maasai can address En-kai, ‘sky’, in prayer, the iloibonok are in daily communication with him through dreams, trances, and signs. His sanction, through them, must be obtained for any important action. Under the protecting eye of these experienced initiates in the sacred ways unfolds the pattern of tribal life: birth, marriage, coming-of-age, and death. Ancestors hardly impinge on the consciousness of the Maasai, since they have no distinct notion of personal survival after death. The corpse is normally left in the bush to be eaten by hyenas: at most the relatives of an elder would pile heavy stones on top. The souls of old men, they believe in particular, may return in the form of snakes.

With the exception of the nomadic Maasai, ancestor cults feature prominently in the mythologies of East and South Africa, whereas in West Africa an extended pantheon offers more scope for worship and speculation. There is room for divinities other than the creator god as well as the accidents of fate and fortune so necessary for mythological development. A folklore personage like Anansi, or Mr Spider, appears to be almost a national hero in Sierra Leone. This trickster is shrewd, designing, and selfish; from the safety of a tree Mr Spider enjoys the sport he has helped to create by his subtle wit and takes advantage of the victims to supply himself with food. Neither the elephant nor the hippopotamus can cope with him, and they are tricked into a contest that brings both of them to death. ‘You might be stronger,’ he reflects, ‘but you are also more stupid.’

In Dahomey there still exist innumerable shrines to local gods, their worship little affected by Islam or Christianity. Beneath Mawu, the moon, and her twin brother Lisa, the sun, often conceived as the androgynous creator deity Mawu-Lisa, preside their offspring, the gods associated with the weather, the earth, the forest, and metal; the latter, the Fon people consider, was formed from divine excrement. Many priests are dedicated to the service of the Fon gods, vodu. According to tradition, Mawu-Lisa set the universe in order before she-he made vegetation, animals, and men. They celebrate this in a four-day week, the first day of which is believed to be when Mawu-Lisa established the universal order and when she-he created man from water and clay. On the second day the earth was made habitable for men. On the third day man received sight, the gift of speech, and understanding of the world about him. On the fourth, and last, day of creation Mawu-Lisa presented man with technology.

The Fon, a warlike tribe, must have appropriated the gods of their vanquished foes, since they possess a syncretic pantheon. But conflict that occurs within a homogeneous group has to be fitted into the divine scheme, too. A Yoruba myth pins the blame firmly on the trickster god Edshu. Once this mischievous deity came walking along a path between two fields. He noticed in either field a farmer at work and decided to play a trick on both of them. He donned a hat that was on one side red but on the other white, green in front and black behind. Later that day the two farmers walked back to the village and talked of the stranger they had seen but, whereas one of them said that he had worn a red hat, the other insisted with equal conviction that the hat had been white. The conversation soon turned into an argument, each farmer accusing his fellow of blindness or intoxication, till at last they came to blows. When they drew their knives, they were brought by neighbours before the headman for judgement. Edshu was among the crowd at the trial, and when the headman admitted his own bewilderment, the trickster god revealed himself, made known his joke, and displayed the hat. ‘The two farmers could not help but quarrel,’ he said. ‘I wanted it that way. Spreading strife is my greatest joy.’ By the personification of the four directions of the world, as represented in the colours red, white, green, and black, Edshu reveals how restricted is the viewpoint of mankind. As William Blake remarked: ‘The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.’

Divine favour is, of course, sought by sacrifice. Propitiation offerings are made during drought, famine, or serious illness; otherwise they may be intended to ward off attack, evil, or misfortune. The usual sacrificial objects are animals like cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and fowl, but evidence exists to show that human beings were formerly used. The Makoni of Zimbabwe have a legend of strangulation at a rain sacrifice. Long ago a drought lasted for a whole year. When the wanganga, the medicine-men, ordered the sacrifice of a noble virgin, it happened that a girl of marriage-able age innocent of a man could not be found. Therefore the wanganga advised that a young girl, who had not yet reached puberty, be imprisoned until she was ready for marriage. Though this took two years, in the course of which no rain fell and all the cattle died, the plan was strictly kept. At last the moment of sacrifice came, the maiden was strangled by the wanganga, and her body buried in an antheap beneath the roots of a great tree. For three days the Makoni people danced round this tree, which grew till it reached the sky. Then the morning star appeared, the crown of the tree spread across the sky, blocking out the moon and stars, and a tempest arose. The leaves of the great tree were torn off the branches and tossed into the sky as clouds, storm clouds that for thirty days without cease poured the waters of heaven over the parched earth. Such, say the Makoni, was the origin of the rain sacrifice.

In modern times changes have taken place in Africa. The long isolation of the continent has come to an end through slavery, imperialism, urbanization, money, communications, missionaries, and, most recently, independence. The old religions are in retreat, while the African idea of a supreme deity has been incorporated in Islam and Christianity. Many temples have disappeared, but the ancestor cults continue with some vigour. Yet there remain numerous living mythologies, not all of which have been properly recorded, as a testimony of the rich past of what was after all the cradle of mankind.