Efuru

Uhamiri is the beautiful lake goddess that appears in Efuru’s dreams. Uhamiri lives beneath the lake and has beauty and wealth. She is a fertility goddess, although as Efuru notes, neither she nor the women who worship her have children. Nwashike reveals that Efuru’s mother also had dreams about Uhamiri, but it does not seem that she became a worshipper. Efuru is not pleased that Uhamiri has chosen her, and when she falls ill, a dibia claims that it is due to her neglect of Uhamiri’s shrine.

Uhamiri symbolizes the paradox of womanhood. Water is a symbol of fertility and intuition, and the lake goddess personifies these attributes. Women seek her as a source of consolation and empowerment. Uhamiri’s divine feminine power counterbalances the highly patriarchal nature of Igbo society. However, while Uhamiri is a goddess of female fertility, she herself does not have children. In Efuru’s society, women who have beauty and success but are childless are not fully women. Efuru’s association with Uhamiri frustrates her because she feels that it has provided (and provoked) more questions than answers. At the end of the novel, however, there is some suggestion that Efuru may come to find this association a source of comfort; her final dream implies that if the childless Uhamiri can be considered a woman—one who is worshipped, no less—Efuru can be as well.