Deep in the Algerian section of the Sahara Desert, nestled in the southeastern* corner of the country, are the Tassili n'Ajjer and Ahaggar mountain ranges. The Tassili n'Ajjer range is familiar to the world as the largest open air museum with striking rock formations and prehistoric rock art for which it is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The Ahaggar is home to Mount Tahat, the highest point in Algeria.

But to the Tuareg who have long called the desert home, the Tassili n'Ajjer (the “Plateau of Rivers”) and the Ahaggar mountains are something more.

In this episode of the Mythological Africans podcast, we learn the names the Tuareg people have given some peaks and sections of these mountain ranges, and through them explore the intricacies of the relationship between these extraordinary landscapes and the humans who know them best.

*In the episode, I say the “southwestern” part of the country. This is not quite right.

We ask the Tuareg people about this rock heritage, and we ask this rock heritage about the Tuareg people. — Dr. Ahmed Zegheb, Algerian Anthropologist and Folklorist

References

* Gautier, E. F. “The Monument of Tin Hinan in the Ahaggar.” Geographical Review, vol. 24, no. 3, 1934, pp. 439–43. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/208915.

* Hamida, Souad, and Kazhar Mesaadia. "Nature and Culture in the Land of the Tuareg: A Reading of a Section from Ahmed Zegheb’s Book." Aleph 11.7 (2024): 675-685.

Can’t Get Enough?

* Enjoy these glorious pictures of the Tassili n’Ajjer!

* Read more about Sefar City. The Eight Wonder of the World!

* Listen to last week’s episode featuring the Tuareg and the Desert. Bonus links to past MA episodes about Tuareg mythology and folklore.

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 (including the foundation legend of the Tuareg!)

* 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!

For the month of May, we go north with our meanderings through the landscape of African geomythology. Come along as we cross the Sahara with the Tuareg, the African continent’s great desert nomads. We will travel through the desert where nature has been stripped bare, where nature has vanished and turned into a spirit.

“If you refuse a traveler a sip of water, the desert will deny you water.” — Tuareg saying

References

* de Foucauld, Charles. Chants touaregs (French Edition) (p. 92-94). Albin Michel. Kindle Edition.

* Al-Koni, Ibrahim. The Fetishists. University of Texas Press, 2018. p 159 - 163

Can’t Get Enough?

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.

Around 9:30 pm on the night of Thursday August 21st 1986, a roaring sound, muted like an approaching storm, arose near the area surrounding Lake Nyos in Cameroon’s North West region. In its aftermath there was a strange eerie silence.

When dawn came, no cocks crowed to welcome the rising sun.

No birds sang their pleasure at the steadily brightening day.

No goats bleated their impatience to leave their pens.

No cows lowed their anticipation for wide open fields.

No dogs barked their excitement to greet their human companions.

Roads, normally filled with people headed to farms, to the market, to check traps for game or raffia stands for palm wine, were empty.

No motor bikes roared across the hills, carrying people from one village to another.

The few people who could be seen walked slowly, eyes glazed, mouths hanging open in breathless agony at the horror of the scene around them.

And what a scene it was. Almost every living creature in the area lay on the ground.

Dead.

What happened? In this episode of the Mythological Africans, we’ll discover how a tragic myth from the Kom people of Cameroon’s Northwestern region might have recorded an earlier occurrence of such an incident.

References

* Shanklin, Eugenia. "Exploding lakes and maleficent water in Grassfields legends and myth." Journal of volcanology and geothermal research 39.2-3 (1989): 233-246.

* Freeth, Samuel J., Charles O. Ofoegbu, and K. Mosto Onuoha, eds. Natural Hazards in West and Central Africa. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013. p 59 - 64

* Natural Disasters, Sustainability and the Legacy of the African Geomyth by Aramide Moronfoye

Can’t Get Enough?

* Read Bad Lake by Nkiacha Atemkeng

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.

In “Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins”, American Geologist Dorothy Vitaliano asserts that the lack of widespread catastrophic flood myths from the African continent is one of the reasons why people who study such things came to question the plausibility of a global flood as described in the biblical account. There are, however, many flood myths from the African continent. In this episode , we will hear two from Cameroon (my country of origin!) and a couple from other African countries.

Note: Dorothy Vitaliano credits her version of the origins of Dilolo Lake to Scottish Missionary David Livingstone. However, this story is not mentioned in Livingstone’s commentary on his discovery of Dilolo Lake in “Explorations into the Interior of Africa”, published in 1857. I couldn’t find Livingstone’s account in any of the publicly available material on his discovery of Dilolo Lake. If you know a source, do share!

References

* Cameron, Verney Lovett. Across Africa. United Kingdom, G. Philip & Son, 1885. p 373 - 374

* Engard, Ronald K. "Myth and political economy in Bafut (Cameroon): The structural history of an African kingdom." Paideuma (1988): 49-89.

* Farrar, F. W. “Traditions, Real and Fictitious.” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. 3, 1865, pp. 298–307. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3014166. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.

* Gufler, Hermann J. “Reenactment of a Myth. The Fon of Oku Visits Lake Mawεs (Cameroon).” Anthropos (2009): 347-357.

* Higgens, T. W. E. “Holy Wells and their Superstitions.” The Antiquary 22 (1890): 231-231.

* Vitaliano, Dorothy B.. Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. United States, Indiana University Press, 1973. p164 - 165

* Flood Stories from around the World by Mark Issak

* Mythological Africans Thread about African Flood Myths

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!

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

In this episode of the MA Podcast, we introduce the concept of Geomythology (another term for the folklore of landforms). In the process, we also start our exploration of the kinds of stories African people have come up with to explain the landforms and landscapes of wherever they have found themselves on the continent.

References

* Belcher, Stephen. African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics) (pp. 320-321). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

* Natural Disasters, Sustainability and the Legacy of the African Geomyth by Aramide Moronfoye

* The Virunga Mountains

* Vitaliano, Dorothy B.. Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. United States, Indiana University Press, 1973.

* Vitaliano, Dorothy B. “Geomythology: geological origins of myths and legends.”Geological Society of London Special Publications 273.1 (2007): 1-7.

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! If you are new to mythology and folklore from the African continent, you can expect exposure to some major themes, creatures and figures. If you are familiar with mythology and folklore from the continent, you will (hopefully!) get a better understanding of various themes and discover new creatures and figures. If you're an expert in African orature, I hope you will appreciate the storytelling and pick up a kernel or two of new information from the commentary.

This book has been writing itself since I started Mythological Africans in December of 2020. Your questions and comments and challenges and contributions fill the pages, cover to cover. More than anything else, I hope to reach people, African or otherwise, seeking to understand African mythology and folklore better. As I've said here so many times, I believe that by connecting African stories to stories from around the world, we can remind ourselves of the fundamental truth of our interconnection.

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

Hello friends, new and old!

(New friends, read this post if you’re not sure what Mythological Africans is about.)

Meanwhile, I am so thrilled to share this week’s MA podcast episode with you! We are starting out on one of my favorite aspects of studying folklore: the connection between folklore and landforms. If you grew up in a place with a distinctive geographical landform of any kind (mountain, valley, hills etc.), you probably know how the stories about these landforms have carved terrains of their own on the psyches of the people who live near them.

In this episode, we take some time to discuss why it is important to study and understand the stories we have told about the land on which we live.

“Geography is the study of places but there are few places on earth which do not owe their present and past appearance and character to the interaction of nature and man. Thus, folklorists must maintain an awareness of geography if they are to fully understand the attitudes and beliefs and appreciate the cultural and spiritual forces which have been at work to make a people who they are.”

— Karl A. Sinnhuber, German geographer

References

* Antwerp Chocolate Hands

* More about Edo Royal Coral

* Sinnhuber, Karl A. “On the Relations of Folklore and Geography.” Folklore, vol. 68, no. 3, 1957, pp. 385–404. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1258359. Accessed 7 Apr. 2025.

* Tanda Pits: Balancing Cultural Preservation and Tourism

* Wrigley, Christopher. “The River-God and the Historians: Myth in the Shire Valley and Elsewhere.” The Journal of African History, vol. 29, no. 3, 1988, pp. 367–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/182347. Accessed 7 Apr. 2025.

Relevant MA Episodes

Meanwhile…

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

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

Hello Friends!

In this week’s episode, the last in our exploration of African trees and forests, we’ll acquaint ourselves with some arboreal friends and fiends from across the continent.

We start with a tragic historical account of the felling of two great Baobab trees in Lokoja (Nigeria). Next, we learn, from Baganda (Uganda) folklore, why the African Tulip’s tree’s flowers are flame red. Finally, we speculate (very lightly) about the true symbolism of the Basotho tree, Koumongoe.

This is a longer than usual episode because I read more than one folktale.

I hope you enjoy it!

PS: If you happen to know about any commentary (preferably by a person of Basotho origin) on the The Sacred Milk of Koumongoe, please reach out!

References

* The Story of Ogbe Baba Akinyelure and the Irojo tree of Ibode

* Oluronbi and the Iroko Tree

* Magana Hausa. To which is added a translation in English by J. F. Schon.

* The Use of Baobab Leaves (Adansonia Digitata L.) for Food in Africa: A Review by John Rashford

* The Flame Tree and Other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda by Rosetta Baskerville

* The Sacred Milk of Koumongoe

Meanwhile…

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

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

Hello there!

(And welcome to new friends! Read this post if you’re not sure what Mythological Africans is about!)

Have you been following along so far this year? We’ve been talking about how the natural world shows up in African mythology and folklore. In recent episodes, we’ve focused on forests and trees, although we took a small detour, last week, to talk about my newly released book, The Watkins Book of African Folklore. Yes, it does include a story about a tree!

However, as some of you may know, Friday March 21st was International Forest Day. This is a day set aside by the United Nations to highlight the critically important role forests play in food security, nutrition, and sustainable livelihoods. This year’s theme was “Forests and Foods,” which emphasizes the relationship between forests and the global effort against hunger and famine. And so to commemorate that, in today’s episode, we talk about some food giving trees in African folklore. Enjoy!

References

Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales by Robert Hamill Nassau

Children of Wax : African Folktales by Alexander McCall Smith. Buy the book here.

Meanwhile…

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

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

Hello Friends!

We interrupt regular podcast programming to bring you the news.

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

Our baby, all 1.25lbs of her, entered the world on March 11th. She’s currently #2 on Amazon’s list of top new releases in African Literature, and #5 in Folklore & Mythology.

I’m so happy, and so proud, and so thankful for every single one of you who read and support MA. This, literally, wouldn’t be possible without you! It’s been such a delight to receive texts, emails, and social media tags with pictures of the book. Please keep them coming!

ICYMI: Book Talk Replay!

On March 6th, I had the immense honor and pleasure to sit down for a book talk with Dr. Falami Devoe. We read and discussed some stories from the book, and shared our thoughts and experiences on why mythology and folklore matters today. It was one of those chats I wish could’ve gone on forever! You can now watch a replay of the conversation on YouTube. If you’ve ever wondered what I listened to as I wrote, how I selected the stories to include, which are my favorites ( or recommended must-reads), this is the conversation for you! Many thanks again to Charis Books and More, Decatur, GA for hosting the event.

It’s been a whirlwind of a week with Pub Day and Book Talks and life carrying on in the midst of it all. The best part was getting to sit in front of my mother as a published author, and share the moment with my family.

I can’t wait to see what comes next.

In the meantime, if you’re reading the book, I hope you’re enjoying the stories and the analyses. Let me know what you think , if you will!

Thank you all again!

Be well,

Helen

The Nakayima Tree (Pterygota mildbraedii) is one of Uganda’s most well known cultural artefacts. A recent tragedy at the Nakayima Shrine, where the tree stands, highlights some of the perils of poorly informed eco-spirituality. In this episode, we explore the tree’s history and discuss the implications of the incident.

References

* Tragedy strikes Nakayima Tree Shrine in Mubende, leaving four dead and three injured

* Art and Gender: Imag [in] ing the New Woman in Contemporary Ugandan Art

* The Cultural secret behind Uganda’s Nakayima tree

* Reconfiguring the Omweso board game: Performing narratives of Buganda material culture

* Unmasking Ideology in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology: Vocabulary, Symbols, and Legacy (← Read this for commentary on Chwezi history)

* Uncovering the True Story of the Ancient Bachwezi People of Uganda

* Ecospirituality is tremendously beneficial but may hinder environmental efforts, say researchers

* Nakayima tree shrine reopens to devotees amid safety concerns

Meanwhile…

T minus 1 days till “The Watkins Book of African Folklore” or the “Mythological Africans Book”, is out!

More Stuff: Book Talks!

RSVP here!

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