This year’s Africa Night, held on Friday, April 11, packed in a night full of African music, dance, fashion, and food for students, staff, and spectators.

This annual event is sponsored by the Pan-Afrikan Student Organization (PASO), a student-led organization that is dedicated to celebrating African culture and using events as an outlet to educate the community.

Africa Night provides them with the opportunity to achieve this.

PASO Co-President Abdi Umur participated in Africa Night and appreciated the power of the event to inspire and inform the community.

“I think Africa Night is an extremely important event on our campus, where you can experience another culture without leaving campus. We enjoy bringing our culture to fellow students; it’s like inviting someone into your house,” Umur said.

Professor of French and African Studies and faculty advisor to PASO Paschal Kyoore stressed the importance of this event as well.

“It is the one time during the academic year when a student organization can share its passion for and knowledge of cultures or the African continent with the immediate and surrounding community,” Kyoore said.

Many aspects of African culture were displayed that night, including African dress, food, music, and skits. Co-Chair of Africa Night Awushie Fayose spoke of the large turnout for the event.

“There’s always an enthusiastic response to Africa Night on campus. Usually about 400 people attend,” Fayose said.

PASO brought culture to the eyes of the spectators through the myriad of traditional dances and instruments presented throughout the show, as well as to their mouths with the variety of African cuisine. There were dance and musical performances from Cameroon, Senegal, and Nigeria. The food prepared combined the ethnic influences of Morocco, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

The fashion show portion was one of the highlights of the night. Students walked onto the stage to the sounds of loud music and cheers from the audience. Each wore an outfit that displayed the unique style of clothing from a specific region of Africa. The fashion show succeeded in bringing together students both inside and outside of PASO, all were there to celebrate African heritage.

An important part of the show were the short skits performed by the members of PASO written by former PASO Co-President Fedha Abera.

“For Africa Night I was in charge of the skits. People liked it [last year], so we brought it back this year. The skits are based on a day-in-the-life of an African family. There are a lot of comedic moments in them,” Abera said.

These skits succeeded in bringing out potentially difficult subjects in a good way, as well as educating the audience on life of African immigrants and their children.

“The students acted out scenes depicting the sort of dialogue that needs to happen between parents and children of African immigrants in the USA,” Kyoore said.

This event was as much about having fun as it was about educating the public.

“We wanted people to appreciate the diversity of cultures through the choice of music, the fashion show, and the food. To learn certain things that might be trivia to Africans but which are knowledge that is lacking in a lot of people in this country. I think it went very well…the enthusiasm that the music and the fashion show provoked was a manifestation of how much the crowd appreciated what the students did that evening,” Kyoore said.