Mainstream entertainment is like a bird that carries fish eggs from one pond to lakes and oceans hundreds of kilometres away.
Most of us think and act the same way, regardless of where we come from, because we watch the same content. We have developed similar attitudes and mindsets, which is why many Ugandans my age tuned in when the United States released hundreds of declassified FBI and NASA files detailing encounters with UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects).
The world as a whole is fascinated by space and the possibility that life could exist on planets outside our solar system. That said, when the US government released the so-called UFO files, I remember thinking that Africa was not nearly as obsessed with aliens as the West.
Think about all the stories of alien abductions you have heard. History.com blames the first UFO sighting on Kenneth Arnold, who claimed in 1947 that he saw crescent-shaped objects moving like saucers skipping on water.
Notice that he did not describe them as ‘Saucer-shaped.’ Nonetheless, newspaper reports from that era emphasized the saucer shape, which eventually encouraged the public to envision alien vessels as flying saucers.
Since then, aliens have become a common topic of discussion among Western populations. The news routinely publishes stories of victims who aliens supposedly abducted and probed before erasing their memories and sending them back home.
An article in Psychology Today claimed that an estimated three million Americans had reported possible encounters with aliens. The article’s author also noted that psychologists had studied many of the victims of supposed alien abductions, and they reached two conclusions.
First, these individuals were not lying. They truly believed their fantastical claims about encounters with aliens. Secondly, these people were not mentally ill. The article eventually blamed their stories on sleep paralysis and false memories.
Regardless of what you believe on this matter, you must have reached the same conclusion I did. Are aliens racist? How come alien encounters and abductions only happen to Europeans and Americans? Now, as it turns out, that conclusion was not entirely correct.
Zimbabwe dominated the headlines in 1994 when pupils from Ariel School reported an encounter with an alien entity at 10am. 62 pupils aged 6 to 12 were playing outside when they saw a silver object in the sky. The object landed in some trees. Then some figures in tight, black bodysuits emerged.
Narrow, pale, and plasticky with large black eyes, the beings were so engrossing that the children could not look away. The BBC released a podcast in 2021 exploring the event. The teachers, who were holding a staff meeting at the time, dismissed the story.
But a day later, parents started flooding the school with phone calls. Their children came home the previous evening and regaled them with tales of an incident at school that had spooked them so much that the parents started demanding answers.
Years later, experts tracked some of the students down (now adults) and questioned them. Their story did not change. They insisted that something otherworldly fell out of the sky that day. The Zimbabwe case is still Africa’s most notorious alien sighting, but it is not the only one.
UFO sightings have been reported in places like Morocco, Senegal, and Sudan. But even then, I would still argue that Africans are not as alien-obsessed as their Western counterparts.
In the case of the Zimbabwe incident, the white children immediately jumped to aliens as a potential explanation for what they saw. However, according to the Mail & Guardian, some black pupils thought the pale creatures were Zvikwambo/ Tokoloshes – goblins from local folklore.
In other words, where (predominantly) white Westerners see aliens, their black counterparts are more likely to report ghost and goblin sightings. This suggests that Africa records just as many alien encounters as the West.
But our traditions change how we interpret our observations and experiences. Whether those encounters are true supernatural/extraterrestrial phenomena or something far more grounded is a separate discussion.
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