Offbeat/Bazar Yemaya
Yemaya turns up at the unlikeliest of places
Marja Bekendam of the VinVis Women in Fisheries network was strolling along the streets of La Laguna, Spain, when she spotted a sign on a piece of tilework outside a little shop. The sign said, Bazar Yemaya. Marja was struck by the name, which she recognized as the title of ICSF’s Gender in Fisheries newsletter. She knew that Yemaya was the African name for the goddess of the ocean but she had no idea how the name came to be painted outside a shop in La Laguna. Intrigued, she sent the picture to Dr. Jose J. Pascual-Fernandez of the Instituto Universitario de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Universidad de La Laguna, who did some investigation of his own.
Bazar is Spanish for bazaar, a market or shop, and the sign was, in fact, the name of a little shop that sells religious images, prints and curios, as well as esoteric folk medicines of Cuban origin (called santeria), discovered Dr Jose. Located on the Tabares de Cala street in the centre of La Laguna, Bazar Yemaya was founded in 1994 by a Canarian women (at a different spot nearby) and now she and her husband, who was born in Cuba, run the shop. The image on the nameplate is actually that of the Virgen of Regla, one of the virgin saints worshipped in the Canary Islands. While it is not exactly an image of the ocean goddess Yemaya, we are glad that it resulted in some delightful serendipity!
