Senegambia, 1707

Foreword :

Mind you, I am African, and this text has no intention of undermining our dignity or our history. Read with hindsight.

The terms ‘white,’ ‘black,’ ‘brown,’ ‘pink,’ and ‘orange’ will be used to designate skin colours, without any racist connotation.

Chapter 1: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

For decades, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) have fascinated and intrigued the Western world. Accounts of UFOs have fuelled theories and captured the interest of the general public, and recently even of scientists, without the same taboo as before. Yet the study of these phenomena has been concentrated mainly in Western countries, often without considering other perspectives.

I’m writing this article because what seemed remote, almost the stuff of science fiction, is becoming increasingly plausible with the recent statements by the American authorities on NAPs.

What if… what if the encounter was imminent?

This may be difficult for some, but let’s try an interesting exercise: let’s change our perspective.

What if we looked at the impact of a revelation of intelligent extraterrestrial life from an African perspective? Beyond cosmogonies, such a revelation could shake up social structures, beliefs and values in Africa. How could African populations, often faced with socio-economic challenges, integrate this new information? What impact would it have on traditional authorities, religious beliefs, education systems… or simply the average person? How would African governments react? Too big a question for just one article, you might say. So I’m going to bring it back to my own vision and to a country I know well, Senegal.

Chapter 2: THE EUROPEANS WERE OUR OUTSIDERS

The history of humanity is full of encounters between radically different cultures. One of the most striking for us is that between the African peoples and the European explorers. I’ve often imagined the reaction of my ancestors to their first encounter with white men using technologies they had never dreamt of.

What if, at the time, these Europeans had taken a humanist rather than a conquering approach? What if they had first tried to understand African culture before revealing themselves? Let’s imagine that my ancestor saw a white man in a hot-air balloon, a revolutionary technology invented in 1783.

How would he have described this encounter? ‘I saw a pink-orange creature with long blond hair, mounted on a round, silent object that was watching me with its piercing blue eyes.’ In short, ‘Nordics’.

Who would have thought? There would probably have been believers, sceptics, scoffers and fascinating discussions under the palaver tree. By adopting an African perspective, we can better understand what those known as ‘close encounter witnesses’ are experiencing today.

Chapter 3: A PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO

The first contact between the white man and the black man upset the balance, bringing about profound and lasting transformations. By analysing African reactions at the time, we can imagine how an encounter with an extraterrestrial civilisation might unfold.

Let’s go back to Senegal. Since that encounter with the white, blue-eyed alien, years have passed and water has flowed under the bridge. Our culture has remained profoundly African, while integrating religions from elsewhere, such as Islam (white people with an invisible GOD) and Christianity (even whiter people with a white GOD).

When discussing this potential encounter with different people, several elements often come up, such as the belief in ‘djinns’, ‘rapp’, ‘deums’ and other supernatural beings from our legends. This belief is rooted in our ancestral culture and reinforced by religion, particularly Islam.

In Senegal, we believe in the invisible, but for us this invisible is very religious. A Senegalese who saw a ‘grey’ would not think ‘extraterrestrial’, but ‘jinn’ – a being of a dimension invisible to the human eye, except in certain circumstances. If we saw UFOs, we would immediately think ‘Mami watta’.

Personally, I’ve made the connection between certain abduction accounts and what are known in Senegal as ‘farou rapp’ in Wolof: beings that abduct people at night for intimate relations. Other beings described by ‘close encounter witnesses’ in the West bear a striking resemblance to those we call ‘kouss kondrong’. These beings are part of our popular legends, but certain discussions can sometimes open up deeper aspects.

I had a particularly memorable discussion in 2021 with a brilliant engineer friend of mine, who was convinced of the possibility of life elsewhere (multidimensional included), but with one reservation. After hours of fascinating discussion, he told me: ‘If these extraterrestrials arrive and say they are Muslims and want to go to the mosque with us, then fine. Otherwise, they are demons in alliance with the Whites to dominate us once again, and we will have to defend ourselves because slavery is over.’ A vision that, surprisingly, is not far removed from that of certain senior American officials, as mentioned in Lue Elizondo’s book Imminent.

Beyond the sometimes zany aspect, this remains a serious question. Because yes, our first contact with ‘the alien, the Alien’ has not been a success for our people.

Conclusion :

On a positive note Africa has already experienced a first contact. Our beliefs have been overturned, our social fabric weakened, our languages weakened, our medicine called into question and our technologies rendered obsolete. We have even experienced the worst of human violence. But we are still here. A first worldwide extraterrestrial contact doesn’t scare us, we’ve seen others. And I’d even go so far as to say that if these extraterrestrials are intelligent, they’d do well to show up in Africa first: they’ll find a warm welcome there… or NOT .

-SANS-NOM-DE-PLUME-