Culture Matters

DARA E HEALY

She was own-way, headstrong Rainstorm; it said in the reading book she looked with hard gaze at careless clouds lollygagging above and made it up into the heavens to beat them into shape, that's how she got stuck between sky and earth and that's why she weeps and why floodrains fall Octobers and Mays. When she rails and complains of her powerless state, it is the time of hurricanes.

- Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet

AT ONE point, it felt as though the world was consumed by water. This week, rain and water dominated our lives, mocking us with the duality of water being both giver and destroyer of life. In the media images, a man is dragged, suddenly pulled by brown, gushing water, students walk through calf-high water in their school and a woman stares at her car, crumpled and destroyed by the force of the elements.

Caribbean writings and mythology reflect our often complicated relationship to rain and bodies of water such as rivers and the ocean. For instance, it is documented that TT Nobel laureate VS Naipaul once told a school friend that he enjoyed walking in the rain because 'rain is beautiful. I could feel it on my face.'

By contrast, in the well-known opening chapter of In the Castle of My Skin, on the day the young man in the book turns nine years old, a typical Caribbean downpour of rain keeps him indoors. In spite of his mother reassuring him that the showers represent blessings, he is not convinced.

George Lamming's imagery is reminiscent of the havoc caused by the recent rains in TT as the boy watches the rising water, 'the slush of the roads' and 'hammering rain' that bring flood waters under the door and through the leaky roof. The boy cries in despair for his ruined birthday as the waters flow through the village of barrack houses into the 'deep black river.'

In TT, we have Hindu, indigenous and African-influenced mythology around rivers. The name Ganga Mai conjures the healing waters of the Ganges in India. For indigenous peoples, rivers are a source of life and are important for their rituals.

The beautiful half-woman, half-fish or snake known as Mama D'Leau most likely originated from Dogon creation mythology. The Dogon peoples are from a region in Mali, West Africa, who believe that the original peoples were water beings. The Dogon would have called her Mami Wata. In African tradition, mother is associated with wisdom and 'the term 'uat-ur' meant ocean water.'

For the Africans, Mami Wata is a healer and protector, especially of women and children. Interestingly, Mami Wata's use of a comb and mirror suggests a close connection with Osun, the powerful deity in Yoruba culture, known both for her sensuality and her fierceness as a warrior. In countries like Cuba and Brazil, Mami Wata is also called Yemanja, mother of the ocean.

'From I was a little girl my feet itched at the water's edge watching the waves ebb ships coming and going.' Writer Opal Adisa Palmer perfectly represents the childish excitement many of us feel about th