Tingoi

Mende · numen · Mende traditional religion; continuing · numen

Tingoi, also recorded as Tingɔi or Njaloi, is the best-known of the Mende nature genii (dyinyinga). She is pictured as a strikingly beautiful woman, sometimes with a fish-like or snake-like lower body, who sits on rocks in rivers combing her long hair before a mirror. Ethnographers of the Mende, notably Harris and Sawyerr and Kenneth Little, record that a person who manages to seize her comb or mirror gains a claim on her: she appears in dreams and offers wealth and success, but demands a costly return, in some accounts the surrender of a relative to her underwater realm. Sylvia Boone has argued that ideals of feminine beauty embodied in the Sande society's imagery draw on the radiance associated with such water spirits. Tingoi remains a living figure of belief and storytelling in southern and eastern Sierra Leone.

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