For most Westerners, especially Americans, Africa is that Big Country fraught with disease, war, and hunger. Others even view the continent as that jungle in which one is very likely to be eaten up by a lion or any other dangerous carnivorous animal in the street. After all, this is what mainstream media taught their credulous juvenile minds that fossilized the ‘received wisdoms’ into dogmatic evidence in their current adult life.
The Cosmopolitan Club at the University of Illinois should boast of having a wide record of international difference, comprehension, and acceptation of the other. As a matter of fact, consistent with her motto, the Club, in collaboration with the African Students Organization, has been spotlighting African cultures through the weekly Coffee Hours. However, this year, the enhanced creativity of the Club, fertilized by its openness and philosophy of collaboration and integration resulted in an original opportunity to put Mother Africa in the limelight within the Champaign-Urbana community: The African Awareness Month.
For the whole of October 2005, an African country was showcased every Thursday. It all started with Kenya, then Botswana, Ghana, and Rwanda which concluded the Event. The Awareness Month was also the opportunity to start fund-raising in support of a school of the village of Katiali, Cote d’Ivoire. The fundraising ended up in the organization of the Yearly Thanksgiving Dinner of the Cosmopolitan Club, and the receipts will be put together and brought to Katiali by Moussa Koné, a native from Katiali currently staying at the Cosmo House. He will be accompanied by Felix Autenrieth, a German-Canadian student, current President of the House, and equally staying at the Cosmo. Felix has a tremendous interest for Africa, and has displayed invaluable and unmitigated involvement and heartiness for the organization of the Awareness Month and the Dinner.
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Kenyan Coffee Hour (For images on this page: click on thumbnail image for larger image.) |
The Awareness Month really hit the mark. It brought African Awareness not only to non-Africans, but also to Africans who were discovering the cultural realities of other African countries. Moreover, it deterred the hesitations of most African students who did not really know what the House was. It also provided opportunities to stress the notion of African “cultures” over a putative African “Culture.” Plus, the specific organizations and life patterns of countries were stressed through their national dresses, music, foods, etc.
At the first event of the Month, more than 200 people stuffed the room, all curious to hear about Kenya. It was also the opportunity for Africans at the UI to realize how large the Kenyan community was in Champaign-Urbana. It then allowed fellow Kenyans to connect or reconnect with each other and the wider community. Then, Botswana was showcased by two students, whom we thought, were the only representatives of their Beloved country, here at UI. But news about the presentation went far and wide and brought another Botswanan student who arrived this fall. He was very proud to participate at the Ghana Coffee hour and met one of his Botswanan sisters.
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| Ghanaian Coffee Hour |
The third event was on Ghana. The Ghanaian community is one of the largest African communities on campus, and this was shown at their coffee hour. In addition to the common PowerPoint presentations and food tasting and national dressings, they improvised a dancing party that thrilled and involved many members of the audience. The last and final event of the Month was the Rwandan Coffee hour. And Pascasie Adedze, the only Rwandan national at the UI, assisted by her African sisters and brothers, made a bright presentation in which she stressed the colonial underpinnings of the recurrent unrest of her Beloved Country that resulted in the 1994 genocide and how the Rwandan people have decided to move ahead after the hardships of the genocide.
These presentations attracted people from diverse geographic regions to the Cosmo: non-Africans and Africans. While most non-Africans were being introduced to the continent for the first time, the Africans were discovering the cultural differences with other countries, especially as the geographic location of the countries spotlighted ranged from west to east to south via the Great Lakes region. It will not be exaggerated to state, then, that the Club brought the Kids of the Continent together, and the Children of Humanity “Above All Nations.”
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| Ghanaian Coffee Hour |
In regard to the unwavering efforts of the Cosmo Club to know about peoples beyond the Pacific and the Atlantic, being awarded the International Humanitarian Prize in 2005 was just fair. Only in knowing the other and understanding and accepting cultural and cognitive difference among cultures will humanity be set on the path of real Peace. With such prerequisites and principles, the waxing and gluing sweetness of Love will always de-activate the combustibility of stereotype-induced hatred, as well as ethnocentric and homophobic flames of violence.
The Cosmopolitan Club of the UI is a relevant forum occupying a vanguard position in such principles. By Africanizing the Cosmo House for an entire month, through the African Awareness Month, the Club allowed most stereotypes about Africa, the cradle of human kind, to be dispelled. It also taught most Americans that Africa is not a country as the USA, but a continent of—at least—fifty-two countries and thousands of ethnic groups with a multitude of cultural practices. A continent which provides a great quantity of the world’s raw materials that are used to manufacture products in the West that are then sold back to Her, at an excessive cost; a continent that is originally rich but impoverished by a combination of internal and external forces like slavery, colonialism, and ongoing neo-liberal globalization. The African Students’ Organization is honored by its collaboration with Cosmo, and dreams to see the motto of the Club adopted by the entire world, for, “ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY.”
Batamaka Somé is a doctoral student in anthropology, and President of the African Students’ Organization at the University of Illinois.