I always have my camera with me when I walk on the beach here,\u00a0as offerings to the spiritual figures of the belief system that crossed the Atlantic with the African slave trade are likely to appear.\u00a0 Of course the history of that trade is appalling, but the deeply held\u00a0beliefs continue to sustain many now-free people up and down the americas. In\u00a0all societies these beliefs are\u00a0expressed and confirmed through ritualistic practices, art and\u00a0music, all of which are handed down orally and aurally, and usually augmented by documents and text\u00a0as a society moves towards literacy.<\/p>\n
When I first came here I was rather disgusted by what I thought was merely discarded litter, and to be fair,\u00a0although things have improved, back then there were\u00a0far too\u00a0few rubbish bins around Uruguayan streets, rubbish collection could be intermittent, and I have seen many people casually throw down litter in the street or out of windows of moving vehicles.\u00a0 Though better now, it is still\u00a0one of the things that has always bothered me in this country.\u00a0\u00a0 One day several years back I encountered a group of three women carefully taking several figurines down to the water and ritualistically ‘rinsing’\u00a0them.\u00a0 They obviously didn’t mind me watching, and when I asked a question they began to tell me the first things I’d ever heard about the Goddess of The Sea, Imanja.\u00a0 From the way they talked\u00a0and handled these figurines they were\u00a0sincere and I found it all very interesting.\u00a0 I realised that when freshly set out on the beack, before being scattered by the tide, some of these things\u00a0often included\u00a0perfectly good candles and fresh flowers.\u00a0\u00a0I began asking questions of Uruguayan friends, and a couple of people have offered to take me to ‘services’ of this system, but so far I haven’t felt OK about that – not all the offerings are\u00a0‘good’ – some\u00a0represent curses or bad spells.<\/p>\n
I didn’t\u00a0go to the beach on the night of feb 2nd this year (the sea goddess’ birthday) but two days later I came across the little blue boat,\u00a0below, still bobbing around in the water at our local beach.\u00a0 That was quite good really, for the usual attrition rate of vessels launched that night is 100% destruction within a few hours!\u00a0 I got close enough to see that its contents were gone (tipped out by waves\u00a0I guess, but if so someone put if afloat again)\u00a0\u00a0 It\u00a0was lovely – a flat bottomed basic boat shape,\u00a0very effectively waterproofed with\u00a0blue\u00a0sticky back vinyl or similar, and large shells glued along the sides.\u00a0 Especially on that night,\u00a0people take\u00a0great care and\u00a0time to design and construct their offerings to\u00a0float out to the sea goddess.<\/p>\n
![\"beach](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/beach-offerings-feb-20131.jpg?ssl=1\")
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