Cosmogenesis

Cosmogenesis:

This is The Africologist.

And I am your host Val Lopes.

It’s all about science, technology

and the African continent here.

Storytelling

is as old as communication itself.

We use it to relay information,

we share past experiences

to enhance the coming ones.

In our tales, animals

talk, mountains live,

the wind breeds and stars gaze at us.

Thanks to human imagination

and our ability to distort reality

simple incidents are enhanced

and embellished to trigger

deep and long lasting emotions

when relayed from one person to the next.

Some call it fantasy.

Others see in it an exceptional trait

that separates us from other species.

But where does storytelling come from?

Just like humanity itself,

the roots of storytelling are

deeply anchored on the African continent.

The African narrative is the genesis

the epic of humanity,

as all this storytelling can be.

She is the africologist.

She travels around to understand Africa’s

past, present and future.

Name and lineage:

Johari, granddaughter of Ibu Diallo

Ibu Diallo, begets two sons,

Her father, Musa

and Enitan

who created an African artificial

intelligence and voice assistant

in the form of a djembe.

Hello Africologist.

How can I help you today?

She has not yet

decided what she wants to study.

Although she dreams of becoming

an astronaut.

Night is nothing more than the shadow side of

Earth

As our planet dances around the sun and spins around itself,

longitudes get their fair share of darkness.

This is what her uncle

would have described as Earth

dancing around the fire.

I love to look at Africa from space. 

The world is so big

and we are so small.

When the night falls

every continent shines so brightly. 

We can see very clearly what humans have achieved.

In the age of electrical abundance,

human made light sources draw

the beautiful outlines of the continents.

She can easily distinguish natural

from political borders, but also the

apparent contrast between well developed

and less developed countries.

At night, one continent is very

hard to see from space. Africa does not have enough

electricity infrastructure to shine.

That makes me sad,

and I will help change that.

Every time she learns something,

she closes her eyes

remembers her conversations

with the elder.

And compares her learnings to the vast knowledge

they had accumulated over the centuries.

She has a unique ability to visualize science

and to use her cultural wisdom

to make sense of the world.

In these dreamy moments,

she travels the space time

continuum, reversing time.

She leaves our solar system,

our galaxy, on an imaginary journey

to the edge of the universe.

Requesting flight attendants to be seated

we are  landing in about one minute.

Thank you.

While traveling Africa, I identified

three fundamental methods used to explain

the origins of the universe.

For some of us, those guided by faith,

everything started with God.

Others, like the Dogan people for example

have ancient stories that they have been telling for generations.

In these stories humans descended from the stars,

but the only way to explain everything rationally,

the story that we can all agree on, regardless of faith, cultural wisdom

or descendants, is science.

That’s Soweto right there,

Djambe

Tell me how the universe was born.

In the beginning,

according to the Bambara people in Mali,

there was only the emptiness of the void.

The universe and everything in it

begun from a single sound.

Everything came from this sound.

And science says 13.8 billion years ago,

the universe was born in the mightiest of all explosions.

The Big Bang,

It has been expanding ever since

the first atoms developed shortly after,

they formed gigantic clouds,

speeding and moving away from each other.

Those clouds became galaxies.

The first stars emerged

inside these galaxies.

Not much different from our sun.

Starlight, fueled by hydrogen, flooded

the universe.

Nuclear fusion created

heavier atoms

like carbon, iron, oxygen and silicon.

The building blocks of planets, asteroids

and other space rocks.

In these furnace of cosmic proportions

under unimaginably long periods,

the universe would eventually enable life.

Somewhere in the corner of the Milky Way

on a tiny planet from a tiny sun

this life gained consciousness

and tried to understand itself.

When I am on the road like this

Inspiration strikes

I keep thinking about this proverb

He how does not travel

Does not know the value of men

How do I tell the history of everything in a way that

our people not only understand

but feel too

I want them to live it

Things can get quite scary on the road

But in hindsight

It’s not that my life was in danger or something

On less cloudy days,

one can see how the Namibian starry nights

inspired our ancestors.

Stories were way to explain

the movements of the heavenly bodies.

All across the continent,

people expressed the imagination

in the most beautiful creationist stories.

The Africologist was initiated in the Sona Art

of the Tchokwe people,

where a story is told by drawing a long continuous line

around the symmetrical pattern of dots.

This is how it works.

You start by drawing a pattern of dots,

some Sonas are pretty simple

like this one, but

others can be extremely complex.

These dots

are then encircled by a long line

you cannot draw twice over the same line.

The beauty lies in the story

you tell while drawing.

Each Sona has its own story.

The story starts

when you place your first dot

and finishes

when the two ends of the line

touch each other.

God up high

created the sun to the left,

the moon to the right,

and humanity at the bottom.

Sona is the path connecting everything

to God,

the sun was the first to follow it

and go visit God.

God offered a chicken to the sun

and ordered her to return in the morning.

The following day,

the chicken’s crowing woke

the sun and she went to God.

God said: “You did not eat the chicken.

You may keep it and return here every day.”

So every day

the chicken’s crows and wakes

the sun giving us the sunrise

on its way to God.

The Moon was next to visit

God and also welcomed with a chicken

the following morning,

the chicken crowed and woke the moon

so he made his way to God.

God said,

Since you did not eat the chicken,

you may keep it, but you will

return here every 28 days.

So every 28 days,

we are blessed

with the new moon in the sky.

The last to be welcomed by God

with a chicken, was the human,

but on his way back to the Earth,

the human could not stand the hunger

and ate the animal.

The next day, with no chicken to crow

and wake the human

he only made it to God

when the sun was high in the sky.

God asked: “Where is the chicken

I gave you?”

The human said “I was hungry, so I ate it.”

“Fair enough.” God replied,

“but the Sun and the Moon

never ate the chickens I gave them.

That is why I bless them

with eternal life.”

“You ate your chicken, and as your chicken,

you must die.

You may only return to me once you die.”