The African Students’ Organization celebrated their annual African Night on March 18 in the Ballroom of the Memorial Union Building. It was a night of cultural dances, music, drumming, storytelling, a fashion show and a feast of African food.
The night began with dinner. Diverse foods were on display and the audience served themselves the amount of food they wanted to eat. There was puff-puff, a snack, yam porridge and jollof rice from West Africa; a vegetarian potato soup from Cameroon; gizzard stew from Uganda and Algeria; kelewele from Ghana; sobolo or zobo drink from Ghana and Nigeria; and an Ethiopian fruit drink. A few minutes after dinner began, most of the food was finished, not because small quantities but because the audience was very large and the food was so tasty.
As the audience ate, video clips played on the projector screens in the ballroom. The videos span different genres from poetry, traditional and pop music, as well as a cartoon video about the 54 capital cities of the 54 countries that make up the African continent. The video display featured Alda Lara from Angola, Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho from Ghana, Chuma Nwonkolo from Nigeria, Mutabaruka from Jamaica, Maya Angelou from the U.S., Miriam Makeba of South Africa, reggae music star Rocky Dawuni from Ghana/U.S., Angelique Kidjoe from Benin, Sona Jobarteh from Gambia, Diamond from Tanzania, Juliana Kanyomozi from Uganda and Dina Anteneh from Ethiopia.
The performances started at 8 p.m. with a fashion display of clothing from many countries. MTU students from India, China, Ghana, France, the U.S., Nigeria, Rwanda and Ethiopia wore the clothes. There were short descriptions of the clothes that included where in Africa they originated.
After the fashion show, the guest performing dance group, Bi-Okoto Dance and Drum Theatre, held the audience captive with intriguing and energetic dance moves for 20 minutes. Some of the audience members joined in the dance, making the whole atmosphere electrified with joy. The Bi-Okoto Dance and Drum Theatre is a professional dance group from Cincinnati, Ohio. It has toured and performed in forty-eight states, as well as internationally, including performances in South Korea’s Youth Festival and presidential welcomes in Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and France. The United States Armed Forces Entertainment selected Bi- Okoto for a five-week military tour of the United Kingdom, Norway, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium in 2003 and 2004.
The dance was followed three folktales from Ethiopia. An undergraduate student from Angola also shared his experiences as an international student in the U.S. His narrative style was comic and got the audience cracking their lips with laughter.
The event closed with another 20 minutes of vigorous dance performance by Bi-Okoto.
The African Night celebration was instituted by the African Students’ Organization in 2001. The organization was established as an umbrella organization for all undergraduate and graduate students at Michigan Tech with ancestral ties to Africa. The current membership is around 40 consisting of members from Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, the U.S. and Zimbabwe.
Hua Wang, a PhD student, told the Lode that “I enjoyed the night a lot. I like how the performances involved the audience. It’s so different from Chinese ones.” “As an admirer of African literature, I felt like I was seeing characters in African novels in front of me performing in reality from what I read in books. It was a unique experience and my first participation in African cultural life. I look forward to the next,” said Geethu M. Jose, a PhD student from India.
The event was supported by the Lode, Graduate Students’ Government, Undergraduate Students’ Government, the Department of Humanities, Professor Ronald L. Strickland the Professor Beatrice Quarshie Smith, as well as the International Programs Services.
