Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

The spoken word is a powerful tool. In contrast to written text, oration has an added emotional quality that is conveyed in the quivering of the vocal cords and the tambour of the voice. Words may tell the story, but the voice makes it come alive. Malidoma Patrice Some recounts his life story in the audio version Of Water and Spirit. Sadly, you know that as Malidoma narrates his life, he is simultaneously reliving it, making it more vivid for the listener. Malidoma’s story, however, is not the story of one man’s struggle in a world slowly being dominated by European society. It is the story of the African culture that is trying to maintain its identity during a time of colonization and change. Although an autobiography, Malidoma’s story highlights tenants of the African culture and philosophy that we have seen present in other texts and classroom discussions. Specifically, there is an ignorant Western attitude toward African culture, a sense of African communalism, and a strong belief in the supernatural.

The beginning of the troubles for Malidoma and thousands of African men and women began with the colonization of Africa by the Europeans. Their intense desire to drive out an indigenous culture and replace it with something familiar and safe, to Europeans only, resulted in the displacement of blacks, such as Malidoma, from their homes. More importantly, Malidoma’s story confirms that Europeans made no attempt to learn about the new culture they had settled on. As with Africans who were brought to the United States during the slave trade, Malidoma was not allowed to speak his native tongue, despite the fact that he was in his own land. The doctrines of respect and love for others that Christianity supposedly espo...

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... of the show. The knowing and understanding is not as important in the African culture as the emotion and feeling.

These three themes we have seen run throughout the texts we have been studying during the semester. Malidoma inherently wove them into his story because the culture’s beliefs and values cannot be separated from the discourse. I think it is important to close by noting that a culture’s philosophy can be present, as we have seen here, in oral tradition. Although Malidoma was reading from a book he wrote about his experiences, he could still relay the story without having written it down, and the story would not be any more void of African philosophy and culture. Therefore, as Malidoma spreads the word of the African culture (his mission set forth by the elders), he also proves the point that a culture’s philosophy is present in its oral tradition.