On Nov. 14, the Africa Global Student Interest Group hosted its annual Afro Fest, a night celebrating members of the NYU Abu Dhabi community from the African continent and African diaspora. Nearly 250 students, community members and administrators gathered in Al-Diwan to eat, dance and learn.

Otelo Reggy-Beane, Class of 2021 and president of Africa Global, described Afro Fest as an event “meant to showcase to the campus community cultures of African descent, so that's cultures not just on the African continent but cultures in the United States — where [he’s] from — cultures in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean. This year, [they] had representation from the Middle East and North Africa [as well].”

For the participants, who represented 23 different countries from Africa and the diaspora, the event stood as more than just a celebration of culture. Reggy-Beane described the night as an opportunity to practice “cultural ambassadorship, an opportunity to develop and build skills, where students can represent their cultures, not solely to the campus community, but use this experience as a sort of a pilot if you will, to begin to have those conversations in the classroom, outside of the classroom and hopefully throughout their lives, to represent their cultures but also represent sort of what it means to be a person of African descent”.

At the beginning of the night, participants came together to present their own cultural displays. At these stations, students were able to share the unique facets of their communities and showcase their traditions, clothing and food. The cultural displays allowed for conversations between community members and students representing their own countries within the diaspora. Later on in the night, the crowd joined together for a walk of nations, where students walked across the stage representing their countries. There was also a fashion show, which functioned both as an opportunity to educate community members about the significance and history of particular garments, as well as a demonstration of the vast diversity within the African continent and diaspora. There were a wide range of performances during the night, including Caribbean group dances and even a short introduction to Jamaican pickup lines.

“I think Afro Fest is a great time for people from the African continent and diaspora to showcase our diverse cultures to the NYUAD community, and at the same time, our SIG members have the opportunity to learn things from each other,” said Enid Mollel, Class of 2022, commenting on why she enjoys the event. Mollel showcased this diversity with a performance of the song “We Are the World”, singing her verse in Swahili while being accompanied by Tatyana Brown, Suzan Sadek and Brian Chesney, who sang verses in Spanish, Arabic and Twi, respectively.

“I really enjoyed all the multi-cultural dances, especially the fact that one practice from one country was done by different people from different parts of Africa, like how the Ethiopian dance had Egyptians in it,” said Steffanie Dias, Class of 2022. This multiculturalism was present in nearly every aspect of the event, with students including others in their traditional dances, teaching their traditions and even offering their own clothing in the spirit of inclusion.

Naijah Simon, Class of 2023, from the United States, recounted her experience walking in the fashion show and being able to experience others’ background through their own traditional dress.

"I was wearing a Tanzanian jumpsuit that I got from this girl […] she says that she wears it to church, and as a normal piece of clothing, and it’s normal for her, but when it comes to me, we don't wear anything like that in the States, so it was special," says Simon. In addition to her jumpsuit, Simon’s face was painted by a fellow student in the style of the Ngoni tribe in Zambia.

Reggy-Beane points to this spirit of inclusion, as well as to the intersectionality of the identities of the NYUAD community members, as what makes Afro Fest special.

“My favorite part of the event is the walk of nations, where we have students take the stage with their country, and also you begin to see students walking with multiple countries to account for the fact that culture is not a monolith and identity is plural in many situations, so being able to see the intersections of people’s national and ethnic identity, I think, was pretty amazing,” said Reggy-Beane.

People from all over the world celebrated their heritage, national cultures, traditions and customs in this exciting event.

Simon commented on her experience: “Everyone was just so welcoming and like, ‘Yes, I don't care about who you are. This is my country; I want you to know about it [...] how can I include you in my culture?’ That felt very welcoming and it just felt like a family.” This sense of familial bond was perhaps best felt in the last minutes of the event, when the entire community came together to teach and learn the dance known as the “Electric Slide”.