I ran into a bit of a problem while doing the research for the first section of my book: “The Watkins Book of African Folklore”. That section is titled “Creation Myths and Foundations Legends” but it was originally supposed to be titled just “Creation Myths.” The problem I ran into was that many stories classed as creation myths in the African context are actually foundation legends. They are not stories about the creation of the world per se, with the expected metaphysical connotations. They are accounts of how the couple recognized as the first ancestors of the people in question came to be in the geographical location they claim as home.

In this week’s episode of the MA podcast, we round up the conversation about African creation myths with a comment on African foundation legends.

If you recall from the first episode of the year, the plan for 2025 is to focus on myths and folklore related to land forms and the natural world, with detours into the realms of psychology and history. Having come so far, I look back at all the episodes and what I find is that the thread running through them is a reminder that what makes us African is our connection to the continent, no matter where we may find ourselves in the world. What makes us African is our remembrance of the land, the waters, the plants, the animals and the lineages, both great and small, known and unknown, whose collective existence is inextricably bound to ours, and whose destruction would be ours as well. What makes us African, is our commitment to honoring this truth in all ways we possibly can.

References

* Belcher, Stephen. African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics) Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. p. 143

* Frobenius, Leo, and Douglas C. Fox. “African Genesis (1937).” New York: B. Blom (1966), pp 49 - 57

* Mudimbé, Vumbi Yoka. Parables and Fables: exegesis, textuality, and politics in Central Africa. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1991. p86-87

Can’t Get Enough?

Refresh your memory on Ibrahim al Koni since we’ll be spending time with his work in December.

* The Desert in Ibrahim al Koni's “Al Majus”

Still Can’t Get Enough?

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We are still looking at African creation myths this month. This week, we examine a version of the creation myth of West Africa’s Mande-speaking people. I’m very excited to spend time on this story because it is one of the best documented and analyzed myths from the African continent. It is also rich in symbolism and communicates so much about how the people who claim it as theirs understand their arrival to and situation on earth.

References

* Dieterlen, Germaine. “The Mande Creation Myth.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 27, no. 2, 1957, pp. 124–38. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1156806. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

* Dieterlen, Germaine. “Mythe et organisation sociale au Soudan français.” Journal des Africanistes 25.1 (1955): 39-76.

* Jansen, Jan. “The Mande Magical Mystery Tour-the Mission Griaule in Kangaba (Mali).” Mande Studies 2.1 (2000): 97-114. (A Criticism of the Griaule Missions)

* Djenne-Djenno

* Scheub, Harold. A dictionary of African mythology: the mythmaker as storyteller. Oxford University Press, 2000. p51

Can’t Get Enough?

* Septennial re-roofing ceremony of the Kamablon, sacred house of Kangaba

* Niger Valley Civilizations

* Jeffreys, M. D. W. “Maize and the Mande Myth.” Current Anthropology, vol. 12, no. 3, 1971, pp. 291–320. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2741046. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

* Jansen, Jan, and James R. Fairhead. “The Mande Creation Myth, by Germaine Dieterlen, as a Historical Source for the Mali Empire.” Journal of West African History 6.2 (2020): 93-114.

* Engeström, Tor. “Some aspects of the Mandé myth problem.” Ethnos 26.4 (1961): 219-226.

Still Can’t Get Enough?

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you were raised Christian like me, your head probably threatens to explode at the thought of there being more than one version of a creation myth. In the Christian worldview, the Genesis account is it. However, even the Christian biblical canon as we know it was compiled and legitimized over almost a thousand years and after a great many meetings or councils as they were known. Similarly, in just about all spiritual traditions with documented accounts of cosmological events, there are variations both legitimate and illegitimate. Some are canon. Some are relegated to the arena of folklore. Some are actively erased from the record, especially if they contradict or threaten whatever the orthodoxy of the time has decided is the truth.

In this episode of the Mythological Africans podcast, we take a break from stories to put some context around variations in mythological and folkloric accounts.

(Listen to Part 1 & Part 2)

References

* Brown, John Tom. Among the Bantu Nomads: A record of forty years spent among the Bechuana, a numerous & famous branch of the Central South African Bantu, with the first full description of their ancient customs, manners & beliefs. Seeley, Service & Company, 1926, pp. 162-167

* Boeyens, Jan CA. “A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico.” Southern African Humanities 28.1 (2016):13.

* Ellenberger, Vivian. “History and Pre-history in Botswana.” Botswana Notes & Records 4.1 (1972): 135-136.

* Finnegan, Ruth. Oral literature in Africa. Open Book Publishers, 2012.

* Ouzman, Sven. “Spiritual and political uses of a rock engraving site and its imagery by San and Tswana-speakers.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin (1995):60.

* Scheub, Harold. A dictionary of African mythology: the mythmaker as storyteller. Oxford University Press, 2000, p140, 151.

* Van Der Ryst, Maria, et al. “Rocks of Potency: Engravings and Cupules from the Dovedale Ward, Southern Tuli Block, Botswana [with Comment].” The South African Archaeological Bulletin (2004): 1-11.

* Walker, Nick. “In the footsteps of the ancestors: the Matsieng creation site in Botswana.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin (1997): 95-104.

* Wilman, Maria. “The engraved rock of Kopong and Loe, Bechuanaland Protectorate.” South African Journal of Science 16.5 (1919): 443-446.

Can’t Get Enough?!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hi Friends!

We’re looking at African creation myths this month on the Mythological Africans podcast (Listen to part 1 here). In this episode, we examine stories of creation by emergence from underground. In these accounts, all that exists seems to emerge from under the earth or a body of water. Emergence accounts sometimes intersect with Ex nihilo accounts where an all powerful being makes creatures and puts them underground or in a cave. This occurs in two of the stories we discuss in this episode. We start with a version of the Mende (Sierra Leone) origin myth, and then explore similar myths from the Kabyle people of Algeria, the Tswana of southern Africa, the Akan of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, as well as the Babungo and Bamougong of Cameroon. We also examine the way European missionaries and scholars distorted or neglected some of these accounts leading to misconstructions which persist till today.

Come for the analyses, stay for the drama!

References

* Brown, John Tom. Among the Bantu Nomads: A record of forty years spent among the Bechuana, a numerous & famous branch of the Central South African Bantu, with the first full description of their ancient customs, manners & beliefs. Seeley, Service & Company, 1926, pp. 162-167

* Boeyens, Jan CA. “A tale of two Tswana towns: in quest of Tswenyane and the twin capital of the Hurutshe in the Marico.” Southern African Humanities 28.1 (2016):13.

* Divine Che Neba, Julius Angwah, “Entry on: Myth of the Origin of the Babungo People by Eleanor Zofoa”, peer-reviewed by Daniel Nkemleke, Eleanor A. Dasi and Elizabeth Hale. Our Mythical Childhood Survey (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2019). Link: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey/item/613. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

* Divine Che Neba, “Entry on: Bamougong Creation Myth by Pierre Keubou”, peer-reviewed by Eleanor Anneh Dasi, Susan Deacy and Karolina Anna Kulpa. Our Mythical Childhood Survey (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2019). Link: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey/item/876. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

* Frobenius, Leo, and Douglas C. Fox. “African Genesis (1937).” New York: B. Blom (1966), pp 49 - 57

* Masoga, Mogomme Alpheus. “Gabriel Molehe Setiloane: His intellectual legacy.” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 40 (2014): 33-52.

* Parrinder, Edward Geoffrey. African Ideas of God. United Kingdom, Edinburgh House Press, 1950. p287

* Setiloane, Gabriel M. “The image of God among the Sotho-Tswana.” Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1976, p 82.

Can’t Get Enough?

* How Mokran Fetta Restored Indigenous Kabyle Folk Narratives

Also

* Listen to the episode about Cameroon’s exploding lakes.

Still Can’t Get Enough?!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Creation myths are the first geological myths in the true sense of the word, even when the accounts speak of eggs rather than rock. Creation myths address the most fundamental question of human existence: how did we get here? And as they answer this question, creation myths also provide reason for the other fundamental question of human experience: why we are here? This way, they structure the experience of living. There are hundreds of creation myths and yet, if you ask most Africans, you will most likely hear the biblical or qur’anic version. That was certainly the case for me before I started curating Mythological Africans.

And so for the month of November on the Mythological Africans podcast, we will take a closer look at African creation myths. We’ll also probe, lightly as always, at what they reveal about what the people who believe in them understand about the forces and processes that move and organize their world. We start with two of my favorite Cameroonian creation myths.

References

* Types of Cosmogenic Myths

* Eleanor A. Dasi, “Entry on: The Bali Creation Myth by Robert Ba Ndangho Fomunyang “, peer-reviewed by Daniel Nkemleke, Divine Che Neba and Susan Deacy. Our Mythical Childhood Survey (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2018). Link: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey/item/443. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

* Eleanor Anneh Dasi, “Entry on: How the Earth (Land) Came to Be by Nson Ngambi”, peer-reviewed by Divine Che Neba and Elizabeth Hale. Our Mythical Childhood Survey (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2019). Link: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey/item/877. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021

MA Posts About Cameroonian Myths, Folklore and Culture

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hello Friends!

We’re at the end of our month-long examination of how different African peoples have fought back against extractive and exploitative industrial and commercial practices, often at the hands of multinational companies.

In the first episode, we discussed Kenya’s Chonyi people’s successful bid to preserve their land and the caves to which they go to commune with their ancestors. In the second episode, we examined how industrial fishing practices like bottom trawling complicates the relationships and practices of artisanal fishing communities on Ghana’s Atlantic coast. For the third and final episode this week, we turn to the Maasai of East Africa and examine what their folklore reveals about their relationships with the land they call home.

Tanzania’s Maasai people are currently locked in a fight to retain control of their ancestral land in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It is the standard issue story of foreign investors working with national governments to implement initiatives that will benefit indigenous people only marginally, while taking over land and stripping away much of what holds the people and their communities together. What is interesting about this case is that this has led to some Maasai elders seeking to remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. This is quite unprecedented. I look at the land through the eyes of the Maasai people themselves to see what they believe they are losing.

“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.” - Wangari Mathai, Kenyan Environmental Activist and Nobel Laureate

References

* Maasai Cattle Songs

* Inkishu : Myths and Legends of the Maasai by Kioi wa Mbugua

* Hey, that’s our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum

* Mount Oldoinyo Lengai

* Can UNESCO Accommodate Both Preservation and Human Rights?

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hello all!

In the last episode, we examined the case of Kenya’s Chonyi people’s fight and ultimate victory in preventing a cement plant from being established on their lands. We ended that episode with a question: How should modern Africans navigate a future which will continue to demand land and other natural resources to support much needed economic development? Here’s another question: What attitudes can modern Africans adopt to ensure that the same exploitative and extractive attitudes we condemn in foreign entities don’t poison our own activities? In this week’s episode, we go to Ghana’s Atlantic coast to examine yet another case of foreign exploitation and explore how traditional beliefs might offer a pathway to more sustainable development.

References

* Adjei, Joseph Kingsley, and Solomon Sika-Bright. “Traditional beliefs and sea fishing in selected coastal communities in the Western Region of Ghana.” Ghana Journal of Geography 11.1 (2019): 1-19.

* Addo, Christian. Singing in fishing: A culturally-centred exploration of the meanings and functions of singing to sailors. MS thesis. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Fakultet for samfunnsvitenskap og teknologiledelse, Psykologisk institutt, 2013.

* Battle to stop Africa’s waters being ravaged by China’s dark fishing fleets

* What is bottom trawling?

* Cameroon: Foreign trawlers devastate fisheries in Cameroon, navy deployed to seize illegal vessels

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

To those who still look and listen, the majestic beauty of the African continent’s diverse landscapes thrums with life, animated by the spirits who inhabit them. Each forest grove or tree, river, mountain, oasis, cave or shoreline is a portal to connection. It is to these liminal places that people go to forge and maintain relationships with the larger-than-life forces that define their lives.

To say the demands of modernity have taken a toll on this landscape would be putting it mildly. Whether it is oil drilling, mineral mining, timber logging, dam building, large-scale fishing, big game hunting or plantation farming, too often (and sadly), many of these projects, while lucrative for the people whose wheeling and dealing brought them to life, do little for the communities on whose land or waters they operate on, extract from, and, ultimately, destroy.

Crushed under the weight of poverty and lured by promises of heretofore lacking jobs, amenities, and opportunities, many communities have, historically, been powerless or disincentivized to resist or fight back when things go bad.

But that is not always the case.

In this week’s episode of the Mythological Africans Podcast, we hear the story of how one community in Kenya fought back and, ultimately, won the right to preserve their land and heritage.

Shout out to Katherine May through whose lovely newsletter I found out about this story.

References

* Ngumbau, Veronicah Mutele, Paul Mutuku Musili, and Guang-Wan Hu. “Premna mwadimei (Lamiaceae), a new species from Cha Simba, a remnant of coastal forests of Kenya, East Africa.” Phytotaxa 510.2 (2021): 155-162.

* Tsuma, Lewa Amos. Achonyi Burial Rituals: A Critical Examination Of Their Effects In Light Of Practices On Christian Widows Of Chasimba Ward, Kilifi County, Kenya Diss. Pwani University, 2023.

* Kilifi Caves (Panga Ya Saidi, Mawe Meru and Chasimba Caves)

* Why Kilifi residents want written deal with cement investor

* How Kenyan villagers saved their sacred caves from a mining company

* Chasimba Cave - Caves in Kilifi County

* Battle to stop Africa’s waters being ravaged by China’s dark fishing fleets

* “It’s Like Killing Culture” Human Rights Impacts of Relocating Tanzania’s Maasai

* Congo’s coltan miners dig for world’s tech — and struggle regardless of who is in charge

Can’t Get Enough?

* For a fictional take on a similar situation, read “How Beautiful We Were” by Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue.

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We are at the end of our month-long series about the intersection of mythology, folklore and psychology in the African Context. But it wouldn’t be much of a series about mythology, folklore and psychology if we didn’t discuss the denizens of the spirit world as understood and experienced across the African continent and so that is what we will end our exploration on.

I decided against including a folktale in this episode, choosing instead to share this MA Twitter thread about what might be thought of as “fairies” in African mythology and folklore.

When I first researched and shared this Twitter thread, I remember being blown away by how the effect many of these creatures and entities (especially some of the malevolent ones) have on humans might as well have been lifted out of a psychiatry text book. At the same time, other descriptions reflected the awe and wonder which African people have experienced as we encountered new people, creatures, situations and ideas. The descriptions of how to move through relationships with these different spirits also reveal much about how people perceive themselves and their place in the world.

The truth is, no matter what western psychiatric and psychological theories say about mental illness, genetics and chemical imbalances in the brain, no matter what Christian, Muslim and other spiritual philosophies posit about angels, demons, and other such entities, there will always be a distinct and autochthonous African way of perceiving these phenomena.

I hope we continue to draw inspiration and insight from the stories that are available about them to step out from under the shadow of fear and aversion that usually hangs over it all so we can better understand and come up with more compassionate and effective ways of dealing with things.

References

- Bourguignon, Erika. “Introduction: A framework for the comparative study of altered states of consciousness.” Religion, altered states of consciousness, and social change (1973): 3-35.

Can’t Get Enough

The Ultimate List of MA Mythology and Folklore Threads on X/Twitter.

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We are in week three of the Mythological Africans Podcast September series on how mythology and folklore from the African continent intersects with psychology. This week, we tackle yet another phenomenon common to the African continent: the incidents of mass panic which seem to take hold of certain communities for days, weeks or even months at a time. Such incidents are curiously common on the campuses of girl’s boarding schools on the continent. As it turns out, I have experienced them myself!

In this week’s episode, we’ll examine some folkloric precedents for some of these events and probe lightly at why certain communities seem so vulnerable to them.

References

* Pinky Pinky

* Madam Koi Koi

* Walsh, Martin. “Killing Popobawa: collective panic and violence in Zanzibar.” 57th Annual Meeting of the African Studies.

* Zhao, Gang et al. “Mass hysteria attack rates in children and adolescents: a meta-analysis.” The Journal of international medical research vol. 49,12 (2021): 3000605211039812. doi:10.1177/03000605211039812

Meanwhile…

The Watkins Book of African Folklore (…or The Mythological Africans Book) is out!

The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:

* Creation myths and foundation legends

* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created

* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)

I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!

Mythological Africans is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.