Destination: Africa; showcasing diversity and African culture
Oluwatomike Bali
Staff Writer
MNSU is home to many International students from different countries and cultural background. Over the weekend, the African student Association (ASA) held their annual event, African Night, to celebrate Africa as a continent and showcase its diversity and culture.
The event which was tagged “Destination: Africa” showcased and celebrated the diversity of the African culture. The theme of the event explains the concept which was presented as an airplane landing in airports of different African countries that was represented at the show and a brief slide show into what each country looked like and their famous historical sights.
The event which took place at the CSU started off with a dinner at 4 p.m., the menu consisted of African foods, a popular west African delicacy called “Jollof rice”, plantains, and popular Ethiopian dish called “injera”.
The main show started at 7 p.m. and kicked off with a fashion show showcasing different styles with beautiful African prints. Some of the African wears was -designed by a MNSU student with a brand name “Iyato by Nimo”.
Immediately after the fashion show, a minute silence was observed for those who lost their lives in the Ethiopian airline crash, afterwards the Ethiopian and Eritrea dance crew came on stage performing their traditional dance moves.
Progressing in the program the host moved the audience into the “Nigerian aerospace”, as they showcased indigenous dance performance to some Nigerian hip-hop. Still within the west African culture, Liberians performed next, dancing to Liberian hip-hop music.
As the night progressed, there was a couple more dance performances from different countries such as Ghana, and Ivory coast, dancing to their hip hop music, while South Sudan and Gambia danced to their traditional music and showed off indigenous dance step pertaining to their culture. The dance performances showcased the rich and energetic cultures of Africa.
There was also a music performance by Udu and Michael Krizz, the music performances celebrated beautiful African girls, there was a slide show going on during their performances, pictures of different African girls.
The highlight of the event has to be a poetry rendition which seemed like a battle between Africans and the white men, the poem talked about important topics like “slavery, white superiority, white people stealing the African culture and seeming like a white savior” and so on. The poem resonated well among Africans, as these were things that happened in the past and has affected different countries in so many ways.
As the show concluded minutes to 9 p.m., the African Student Association board members were introduced and appreciated for putting the event together. To end the show, members of the board performed a choreographed dance performance.
At the end of the event, a brief chat with some of the guest showed that they enjoyed it and they got a feel of what the African culture feels like. when asked general thoughts about the event, one of the guests, Susanna Machinga said, “It was definitely the best one I’ve been to since I got here. I’m so proud of this year’s board. It was organized timely and the theme was unique and executed vert well! They trumped stereotypes of Africans being late and not organized and sett the bar very high for the upcoming board. I can’t wait to see what next year has to bring!”
Header photo by Jeremiah Ayodele | MSU Reporter.