An evening of exotic food, fashion and dancing can be experienced right here at UW this Saturday with the Wyoming African Students Association’s Cultural Show and Dinner.
The cultural night, which takes place first at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 3, and continues with dinner in the Union Ballroom at 6:30, will wrap up a week of smaller events run by WASA to promote an awareness and understanding of the African people and their way of life.
On Thursday, students and citizens are invited to a discussion forum about African identity and issues in room 211 of the Business College from 4 to 5 p.m., and on Friday they can test their knowledge with a Jeopardy-style game show during Coffee Hour in the Cheney International Center’s Skylight Lounge.
“That’s what we want to do, get the African vibe out there,” Andrew Danso, President of WASA, said. “The main goal of this event is to have the audience take a lesson about Africa home, even if it’s something small.”
Those who attend the dinner can look forward to the authentic African styles of rice, chicken, cabbage stew and tomato stew, vegetable and meat samosas and bananalike plantains.
“This year, the different thing we’re doing is that we’re getting a caterer from out of town who owns an African shop and does African cuisine, so this is going to be more authentic African food that will be served during the event,” Danso said.
Earlier in the week, WASA members were present in the Union Breezeway, manning information tables for any who wished to learn about the continent of many countries.
“We have this responsibility to talk about Africa–we’re representing Africa,” Mathias Nwokejiobi, former WASA president, current member and computer science major from Nigeria, said. “This week is the most important opportunity for us to do that, so every single day when someone comes I’m going to try my best to explain why I love my continent.”
Danso, an architectural engineering major from Ghana, explained that Africa’s history has produced many varied cultures as a result of migration within the continent and foreign colonization.
“No two cultures are the same, we all end up learning from each other,” Danso said. “There are a lot of things we have in common without even knowing sometimes.”
Some of this shared history leads to rivalries—such as staking claims on the creation of the most-loved food of Africa, jollof, a dish based on rice and tomatoes and enriched with anything from chicken to banana-like plantains.
“There’s this kind of jollof war about who has the original joloff, that came from Sierra Leone—they had the original joloff but then for some reason, Ghana and Nigeria have kind of held on to this identity of having the original joloff, it’s something that we joke about now and then.”
WASA is also active throughout the year with charity events, fundraisers and game nights, such as hosting gatherings for fans of football, as in soccer.
“Soccer is very important in Africa, it’s also very important in other countries, mostly South America,” Nwokejiobi said. “We have different people coming from outside town, it’s kind of our way of uniting them together to do something they like doing best.”
Another WASA member, Jake Koney, also came here from Ghana and is majoring in chemical engineering and computer science, and was keen to observe certain cultural differences.
“The first thing I realized was, it’s very cold,” Koney said. “The way people greet each other here, sometimes they just say ‘hi’ and walk by quickly, but back home when you say hi people expect you to stand and have a conversation with them.”
Koney also made sure to welcome anyone and everyone to WASA.
“WASA is also not for just Africans, we are open to the general population. Usually, we have some of our friends who come over and join us for meetings and listen to what’s going on, and just get involved with the group,” Koney said. “It’s open to everyone who is open and willing to learn the African culture because that’s what the group is all about. Once you come here and you join the organization we are all family.”
