ASA brings African culture to campus

Africa is a continent with a wide variety of fashion, food and people. One student organization wanted to share the culture with the USD community.

The African Student Association (ASA) displayed the variety of cultures their group contains throughout the week. Last week was the first installment of African Week for ASA, which usually hosts African Night in the spring semester.

Temi Bolaji, president of ASA and junior pre-med and chemistry  major, said ASA wanted to host African Week because they saw a demand to educate the community about African cultures.

“We discovered that there was a need in the community of people knowing the truth about Africa and we know that most of the time when all these misconceptions come up it’s not the person’s fault,” Bolaji said.

The kickoff to African Week started in the Muenster University Center Pit Lounge where members of ASA spoke about what was planned for the week. They celebrated with a cake in the shape of the continent, African art and music.

There was also African clothing and jewelry charms for sale all made by Temiloluwa Adeyemi, a Volante staff writer. 

On Tuesday ASA presented a lecture series that battled the misconceptions of Africa.

Another reason ASA held this week of observance was to drum up excitement for African Night in the spring.

“Just creating an event to help (promote) the event in the spring was also one of the reasons we decided to have African Week,” Bolaji said.

Saeed Dabbour, senior marketing major and executive member of ASA, said they wanted to make more students aware of African Night and ASA.

“One of our biggest things we were focusing on for African Week was making sure that events were happening (in) exposed areas for new students who haven’t heard (about) African Student Association,” Dabbour said.

The largest night of African Week was cultural night, which included multiple performances and skits, traditional African food cooked by ASA members and a fashion show. This night was meant to be a “little taste” of what African Night will be in the spring Bolaji said.

At the end of Cultural Night, the fashion show displayed different apparel of countries that members of ASA call home. The general theme of the clothing was bright colors and patterns.

The fashion show included attire from several different African countries.

Debbie Agbeniyi, junior nursing major and vice president of ASA, said the fashion show emphasized what traditional clothing looks like in different countries.

“We did the fashion show to give people a sneak peek of what we dress like, besides the fact that Westernization has gotten to Africa, but we still have occasions where we have to wear our traditional outfits,” Agbeniyi said. “We just wanted to show people; here’s what’s unique to this country.”

ASA also announced the date of their biggest event, African Night that will be in the spring. The event will be on Feb. 23 in the MUC.