She is the world’s largest tropical lake and second largest freshwater lake by surface area, covering almost 69,000 square kilometers (43,000 square miles). Naturally, she is the largest lake on the African continent. Three countries: Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, lie along her shores. Burundi and Rwanda lie within her reach. To the peoples whose ancestral lands touch her waters, she is everything. To the Sukuma, she is Ukerewe. To the Luo, she is Nam Lolwe: the Endless Body of Water. To the Baganda, she is Nnalubaale: Mother of the Guardian Gods. In Ikinyarwanda, the language spoken in Rwanda, she is Nyanza: the Large Body of Water. She is the source of the Nile, her generosity spilling out at Bujagali Falls and flowing north, nurturing some the African continent’s greatest civilizations along the way.
John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton, the two British military officers who were the first westerners to trace the Nile to its source, renamed her Victoria to honor their queen which...I mean, I get it…but come on!
That doesn’t change what this lake, the greatest of East Africa’s Great Lakes, represents to the people whose lives she has sustained for millennia. It’s probably not too much of a stretch of imagination to say the first humans who emerged from the African continent were nurtured by this lake. She is, after all, at least 400,000 years old.
We arrived at Lake Victoria two weeks ago after sailing up the Nile as part of our discovery of African Geomythology. Having rested in her waters for this long, I figured we could, in this and the next couple of episodes of the Mythological Africans podcast, learn some of her lore before moving on to other east and south African water bodies. One of the stories common to this region is that of the “Stranger from the Lake”. These stories feature a person coming from the lake under mysterious circumstances. This stranger is cautiously welcomed to the community and, after proving themselves trustworthy, marries into the community to start a lineage.
Today, we’ll hear the version of the story as told by the Wasurwa who are, if I understand the material correctly, a clan from the Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania.
References
Kenny, Michael G. “The Stranger from the Lake: a theme in the history of the Lake Victoria shorelands.” Azania: Journal of the British Institute in Eastern Africa 17.1 (1982): 1-26.
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!
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