Mami Wata
The water spirit of West and Central Africa and its diaspora, usually shown as a woman with a snake, said to give wealth and take it away.
Also: mammy water, mami wata, lasirèn, water spirit
Mami Wata, in West African pidgin Mother Water, is a spirit linked to rivers, the sea, wealth, beauty and healing. Devotees in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and Congo serve her through shrines, white and bright cloth and offerings. A familiar image, of a woman with long hair and a snake around her shoulders, derives from a late nineteenth-century German print of a snake charmer that spread by trade, and was taken up by artists and worshippers. The older sources of belief in water spirits are local, and many differ. In Vodou, she appears as Lasirèn. Believers say she picks her followers, often through dreams, and may demand loyalty. Scholars study her as a figure through which Africans reflected on trade and modernity.