Duluth festival highlights Africa's blight and beauty

by Felicia Shultz
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder

Students hope to convey a more balanced view of the Motherland

Genocide. AIDS. Hunger. These critical topics are something many Africans think about every day they are living. Lately, it's something students at the College of St. Scholastica's Duluth campus are thinking about as well.

Four years ago an active student on campus created the United for Africa (UFA) student group. The group did more than just unify a common circle for people of color. Its purpose was then, as it is today, to educate students and the community about what Africa really is.

"To educate" is putting it nicely, notes some of the group's current members. "It's more like updating people's false stereotypes from 1965 to 2009," said Benetta Gayflor, a sophomore and health information management major who is a native of Liberia but has a home in Brooklyn Park.

Gayflor joined the club last year and admits that there's so much to Africa that she isn't yet aware of. "I couldn't even begin to tell you all that there is to learn," she said.

UFA brings awareness on campus to Africa's most challenging issues, but it's also the first organization to point to the continent's bright side.

"The club was created because of the serious lack of knowledge out there," said Juliette Poualeu, a native of Cameroon and college junior majoring in nursing and biology.

"All that people knew about Africa was starving kids. It was a shock to me to think that in this century people just thought of Africa as starving kids and full of poverty."

United For Africa hosted an African Heritage Festival the last weekend in March.
This was the second festival of its kind for the student group. It included an arts and crafts bazaar, music, dancing, a fashion show and poetry - all in African form, as much anticipated.

The festival's full house crowd applauded the performers and eagerly absorbed a somber tale of the Rwandan genocide presented by the festival's keynote speaker, Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager whose story was portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda.

"You have the duty and responsibility to get the United States government involved," he told them. He shared his life story and emphasized the importance of political involvement at a young age.

His message emphasized how the strength of the movement could help curb the killings in Darfur. "Young people, I am telling you," urged Rusesabagina, "you can shape the future. Today is the day to think about reshaping the world."

Dr. Chang'aa Mweti, a University of Minnesota-Duluth professor, was a guest performer for the night as well. As a native of Kenya, he shared his experiences through the art of storytelling, an art he practices daily in his job helping students understand lessons.

"Stories are so powerful," noted an energetic Dr. Mweti. "Stories help break abstract things into concrete ideas."

He noted that people could better understand foreign cultures if they viewed them from the inside. "We need to understand them without criticizing them," he said.

Dr. Mweti expressed his humorous side to the laughing crowd by explaining some of the things that "culture-shocked" him when he first moved to the United States. Things he found most surprising were names of menu items that had nothing to do with the food itself. Examples he provided included: deviled eggs ("They have nothing to do with the devil"); hamburger ("There's no ham in that at all"); pigs-in-a-blanket ("I pictured three full pigs wrapped in blankets"), mosquito bites ("People from Africa don't like mosquitoes"), and hot dogs ("Not even close").

Akin Falade, a Nigeria native and senior at UMD, helped organize the festival. He noted that one of the most challenging aspects of being from Africa and living in Minnesota is trying to teach people what a wonderful world Africa is.
"Africa is such a beautiful place," said Falade. "I just tell people they have to see it themselves to believe it."
While the UFA club looks forward to its third annual African Heritage Festival for next year, the club will spend the coming months focusing on its main purpose - informing students about the blighted areas of the continent while at the same time showcasing all the beauty the Motherland has to offer.

For more information on the College of St. Scholastica's United for Africa group, email unitedforafrica@css.edu.
Felicia Shultz welcomes reader responses to fshultz@spokesman-recorder.com.