Obatalá was ashamed, for even with all his powers, he had failed to create the world. He had lost his way on the mission after getting drunk on palm wine and falling asleep. Meanwhile, Exu, the principle of chaos and order, took the sack of creation and reported the incident to Olodumaré (Destiny) and to Ifá, the diviner.
Even so, the world came into being. And instead of his original task, Obatalá was given a new one: to create humanity.
As a being of great power, he believed this task would be easy. Determined, he descended to Ayê (the Earth) and created the first being out of stone, sculpting it in his own image, but he realized stone was too hard, too inflexible. Then Obatalá tried sand and water, a more malleable combination, but when he formed the human, the motion of the waves caused it to fall apart. He had the idea to make a being out of clouds, delicate and beautiful, but saw that such a being would be ephemeral. Finally, he tried fire, but as strong and vivid as it was, fire consumed itself.
Tired and discouraged, Obatalá sat beneath the Iroko tree and said: “I will never be able to return to Orun.” Orun is where the divinities dwell, what might be called “heaven” in Western terms. In that moment of sorrow, he looked ahead and saw a dark lagoon.
The water in the lagoon stirred, and he said: “I didn’t think there was life around here.” At that moment, a dark-skinned woman emerged from the water and said: “Yes, there is. I’ve been here since the world was created.” Obatalá was a Black albino being, without melanin, and the woman was deeply dark-skinned, daughter of the mud. Obatalá told her his story, that he had been entrusted with two tasks: to create the world and humanity, and he had succeeded at neither.