Anastasia brought her grandmother's calabash (maybe already her great-grandmother's) with me in 1999 after her wedding to Andreas and Maria's baptism had been celebrated in Cameroon.

The calabash should be given to me expressly with the indication that it is needed for the water ceremony. "When everyone is together and drinks water from it, then there is peace," Anastasia roughly explained to me what grandmother had said about it. I took this as a great vote of confidence from this grandmother and an absolutely essential task. (Anastasie later told me that her sisters did not fully agree that she was given the calabash. Perhaps they could not imagine that I would actually perform this ritual. Anastasia once told me that the Cameroonians believed that the Europeans - or the Germans? - have no traditions. Perhaps the grandmother gave her the calabash because she lives furthest away from home.)

The water ceremony is a ritual of a religious character without belonging to a specific religion. I liked that from the start, and it always seemed to fit well with our mixed family and table group. (Maybe this ritual is also part of a pre-Christian African religion? - also good!)

A ritual is a symbolic act. Only something based on a meaningful experience can become a symbol. What is the experience that underlies this ritual?

The water that is shared here represents the essentials of life that should be shared in order for peace to be possible. No human can survive without water. It is the foundations of life that are symbolically - symbolically - requested to be divided!

(Originally, however, water is also drawn, a process that can remind us of our creative abilities, which we need in order for everyone to succeed in a peaceful life.)

The words come together and share tell us that we are only human when we are with us. Peace is only possible when we have our neighbors in view and share what is essential. (For me this is also a core Christian statement.) But what is the "vital", the "necessary, z. B. for us who have everything ?! Our humanity and our creativity, our creative potential, are required for life to succeed!

The old calabash, which is given here as being important for the water ceremony - expresses that this ritual has long been -  "Always" - it was carried out that it is tradition: the grandmothers already had this vessel in their hands and it is a valuable antique and possibly reminds of an old religion .. - A water ceremony can also be carried out without this calabash, but with theirs Exercising in this traditional form we refer to the experiences, attitudes and the accumulated forces of our ancestors and thereby also appreciate them. With the ritual we express the hope that we can keep family peace and beyond that we can also contribute something to general peace, and we hope that this memory will also mean something to our children, to whom we pass this ceremony on with the calabash.

This ceremony is given into the hands of women and I think every woman should find the words that speak to her when it is carried out -  and the respective occasion - fit.