Ngewo
Ngewo AfricaGod of the Mende tribesmen in Sierra Leone. He is also known by what appears to be a much older name—Leve, ‘the high-up one’. The Mende say of traditional usage ‘this is what Leve brought down to us long ago’. As Ngewo, the sky god is remote from the affairs of men, though they believe that it is the deity's power which manifests itself indirectly in natural phenomena. Thus he sends rain to fall on his ‘wife’, the earth. Between Ngewo and mankind are the spirits—ancestral spirits and genii, dyinyinga. The latter are associated with rivers, forests, and rocks; the former have cults designed to facilitate communication between men and the sky god.
After the rites of tindyamei, ‘crossing the water’, departed soul reaches the land of the dead. On his journey the deceased is assisted by the objects deposited in the grave, which is called ‘a house’, because ‘on the other side’ the spirits expect to...
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