Whatever resolutions people made on Copacabana Beach on New Year’s Eve 31/12/2017, they evidently did not include taking their trash home with them or throwing it in litter bins or trash cans. The ugly truth is that revellers left 285.65 tons of trash on the sands. This volume does not include the trash that the waves and tide swept into the depths.
OFFERINGS TO IEMANJÁ
OR PROVOCATION TO OLOKUN?
On New Year’s Eve in Brazil, many people leave offerings of flowers and gifts at the sea’s edge for Iemanjá, the Goddess of the Sea, an important deity in the Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda. The offerings are made in the belief that Iemanjá will grant good luck and good health in the coming year. However, the tons of ordinary trash and garbage left by revellers at the water’s edge are also swept into the sea, causing disastrous consequences for the marine environment.
By any standard adopted, trash and garbage cannot represent a fitting offering to the deity. In fact, most people are unaware that, according to Yoruban tradition, Olokun is revered as the Goddess of the dark, mysterious depths of the ocean. Olokun also represents the sea in its stormy, frighteningly violent aspect. Moved to wrath, Olokun can present the sea’s most terrible, destructive propensity.
I do not condemn the practice of making genuine offerings to Afro-Brazilian deities. However, the ordinary trash and garbage carelessly left by revellers at the water’s edge serve no religious purpose and do nothing but harm to the environment.
One might ask those who believe in Olokun whether such abject disrespect in treating the ocean as a gigantic trash can does not incur the deity’s wrath and provoke the said destructive propensity.
