Hwempetla

Hwempetla is the founding culture hero of Mogodé and the protagonist of the principal Kapsiki mythic corpus, known in many local variants. In the central story he desires the daughter of Rain; warned that a successful marriage would loose rains that never stop and devour his fields, he carries her off anyway. When Rain ranges over the whole earth in search of her, tearing houses asunder and striking the trees, Hwempetla hides for eight days among the grains in a beer jar inside Rain's own compound and so wins his wager. He is further remembered as delivering Mogodé from the payment of tribute in a war among the villages, and as teaching his people not to purchase rain from rainmakers but to ask it directly of God, promising to petition God for rain after his death. He is said to have flown through the air, passing bodily through a granite outcrop still pointed out on the Mogodé plateau, to escape Death in person. The long leaf-covered mounds identified as the graves of Hwempetla and his wife, ringed by hollow millstones and washed with beer, form the culminating station of the communal rain hunt.

Domains

• founding heroism
• rain mediation
• flight superhuman power

Powers

• fly bodily through the air
• outwit Rain in a wager
• deliver a village from tribute
• intercede for rain after death

Epithets

• the flying ancestor

Relations

• spouse: Daughter of Rain
• rival: Va

Sources

• van Beek, Walter E. A. 'The Common Ground: African Notions of Power.' African Studies Centre, Leiden.
• van Beek, Walter E. A., and Henry Tourneux. 2014. Contes kapsiki du Cameroun. Paris: Karthala.
• van Beek, Walter E. A. 2025. 'Rain: The Arena of Power and Religion in Africa.' Human Ecology; van Beek 2012, The Dancing Dead.