a young Black child with closely cropped hair concentrates on walking while holding a large basket filled with bananas and packaged food on their head

Black men and women, some dressed all in white and others dressed in colorful clothing, gather at a riverbank. one of the men in the foreground looks down to navigate the steep terrain while carrying a large drum or buoy shaped object covered in shells and long tassels

photo from above of eight Black men and women, dressed in white, standing or sitting in a shallow part of a river with offerings placed on a rock; on the left side of the frame, the water flows around what appears to be an pile of garbage

a dead white pigeon floats in a shallow stream with a brown rocky bed

a crowd of African men and women walk away from the viewer toward a large one-story building with an adobe-colored roof; more people mingle near the building, making one hundred or more people in total

Each year in Ibadan, devotees filled with heart of gratitude, gather at this river to honour Yemoja, the Yoruba goddess of water, motherhood, and origin.

For these worshippers, they see the river as not merely a landscape and a living presence, rather they see it as an ancestral body through which prayers, memory, and protection flow. As a way of expressing their gratitude, male and female, young and old offers fruits, yam, Schnapps, pigeons and more. This, they believe helps renew a relationship that stretches across generations.

This work documents the festival as a moment where spiritual and communal bonds to a place are reaffirmed. The river holds stories of lineage, migration, and devotion; returning to its banks is an act of remembrance and continuity. Through ritual, worshippers sustain an intimate dialogue with water as ancestor, healer, and witness.

The images bring to the fore enduring ties between people and river, revealing how sacred practice keeps ancestral presence alive even within a changing landscape.