Sahara Longe

‘Granny told us the scariest stories about Mami Wata. If she heard we’d been swimming, she'd get really cross.’ Sahara Longe’s grandmother is by no means alone in her reverence for water spirit Mami Wata, though specific beliefs about the deity vary depending on where one is in the world. ‘She appears in so many different African countries, as well as South America and the Caribbean where she travelled with the slave trade’, explains Longe. ‘So everyone has a different story – my mum thinks of Mami Wata as albino...