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Africa Week celebrated for the first time at UMD
BY CARLY McLAIN
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
iISSUE: 78/25
With many of their events behind them, but some exciting ones ahead, the Black Student Association (BSA), along with UMD students, faculty and staff, celebrates Africa Week for the first time this week. The BSA has talked about sponsoring an Africa Week for the last two years. With so much diversity in the Black community at UMD, they wanted to make sure that people were represented, according to senior Daniel Oyinloye, a public relations officer for BSA, who was in charge of organizing the events for Africa Week. “Gradually over the last two years, the general number of African students had begun to increase on campus and in (BSA),” said Oyinloye. “Knowing this, there was a need to have more events that would bring more awareness and represent countries, cultures and celebrate our way of life.”
Due to a lack of time and money, the BSA stayed with their traditional events such as Soul Food and Kwanza, according to Oyinloye. While the United States has Black History Month in February, there isn’t a specific
date or week when Africa Week started in the U.S., and there isn’t a set week of when it is supposed to be held. “Different colleges celebrate on different days,” said Oyinloye in an e-mail interview. “This week was chosen mainly because we had been notified about the Scholastica event, which we found out they were planning for it to be really big, so it was only right to have ours lead up to that event. Plus it gave us more time to do some planning.” From a World Soccer Debate on Monday to an African panel on Tuesday and a six-hour soccer tournament held at the ice arena on Wednesday, there has been a wide variety of events so far this week.
However, attendance hasn’t been all that high, with only 10 people at the soccer debate on Monday and about 10 people to the panel on Tuesday, according to Oyinloye. “I tried not to expect too much [in regards to attendance],” said Oyinloye. “Though, I hope the turnout is better at our future events.” The main events will be happening later on in the week. At 6 p.m. tonight, in the Library Rotunda, the BSA will sponsor, with the help of the Women’s Resource and Action Center (WRAC), a panel with three keynote speakers. The panelists are women with African heritage that come from different parts of the world and help reinforce the panel’s theme, “Celebrating Black Women during Africa Week at UMD.” “Depending on where we come from, our issues that we face are very localized,” said senior Ayida Abate, an intern for WRAC, when talking about the different backgrounds the women panelists have, and the reason for having the panelists speak.
WRAC wanted to have different areas around the world represented, according to Abate. The discussions will cover the different issues that arise in other areas of the world. An informal storytelling will be held on Friday by the BSA that will allow volunteers to tell their stories of coming to the United States, and a Ghana movie called “Darkness of Sorrow” will also be shown.
On Saturday, March 29, the final event will be held at St. Scholastica (CSS). The BSA will support the celebration called “One World, One Family.” Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz will be the speaker of the evening.
