Half an hour before the African Students Organization cultural show was scheduled to start Saturday night, the SAO gym lost power. With no windows, the room was pitch black. But in the dark, ASO members rushed to continue preparation by cellphone light. The show must go on.
This year marks the 20th Anniversary of ASO as well as Saturday’s show, and to represent this significance, ASO titled the show Sankofa III: The Emerald Celebration. Sankofa is a Ghanaian word that loosely translates to “return,” or “to go back to one’s roots.” ASO Secretary Shamoore Simpson (SAR ’14), who helped organize the event, explained the group has been planning since the fall.
“We wanted this to be bigger because one of our founding members came up to us and was like ‘It’s 20 years anniversary, what are you guys doing?’” She said. “So we had to get it together.”
The cultural show was just one part of a weeklong celebration.
“We had a pep rally on Monday, service day on Tuesday,” Simpson explained. “We had a symposium on Wednesday. Thursday was a dance workshop. We had food in the dining halls on Friday. When we said big, we meant big.”
The last event of the week was a harbor cruise on Sunday, April 14, which sold out before the cultural show even started.
Audience members were just beginning to arrive when the power came back up, and attendees mingled at the fifteen round tables set up for the event.
During the controlled chaos, audience member Howard dePass, Jr. (CAS ’14) expressed excitement to see the dance numbers in the show.
“A couple of my friends are performing, so you know [I’m here for] moral support and just to enjoy the show,” he said. “I heard [my] freshman year and sophomore year it was really good.”
Some big names at BU turned out for the event, including Dean Kenneth Elmore and Howard Thurman Center Director Katherine Kennedy. There were students from BU, Northeastern, and Suffolk in attendance
Despite the power issue, the show began on time with an act titled “A Tribute to the African Man.” Male models draped in flags from different African countries wound through the audience to a poem reading. Following that, Afrithms, ASO’s Premier Dance Troupe, took the stage.
The rest of the show was divided according to African region. The show mixed breathtaking fashions with dance performances, skits, and informational presentations, some by ASO members and some by professionals or outside student organizations. North Africa was represented by a runway show of Egyptian fashions, followed by a dance number by belly dancer Seyyide Sultan.
The West African portion began with a performance by Lamine Toure and Rambax Drummers.
The show then took a more serious tone when Randell Duada, a Northeastern graduate student, took the stage to talk about the Liberian Girls Initiative, a non-profit organization aimed at keeping girls in school by providing feminine hygiene products to those who cannot access them. After Duada’s message, the show returned to performances.
At intermission, audience members sampled Nigerian cuisine, followed by the piece on East Africa. The highlight of that section was a skit by Anne Kansiime called “Don’t Mess with My Man,” which portrayed an angry African woman tracking down the woman trying to “mess with her man.” The audience was in stitches.
The section on Central Africa featured another dance number and a humorous but educational skit describing how Central Africans arrange marriages. The night concluded with the section on South Africa, which mimicked dance numbers from a classic movie called Sarafina.
At the end of the show, Simpson reflected on ASO’s goals.
“We want to be an established student group on campus,” she began, “and let people know that it’s not just for Africans, it’s not just for people of color, it’s literally a group where if you want to learn about Africa, even if you’re just a bit interested, come.”
