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The Field House was transformed into a bazaar this weekend. Table after table was piled with food, leaflets, or small artifacts from countries all over the world. Flags from many nations poked above the bustling crowd of people.
Yannick Miaffo, a senior computer engineering major who is originally from Cameroon, said Culturefest is “one of the most important times of year for international students. We feel like we’re home. Eat our food, dance our music, sing our songs. It’s like bringing the world into one place, all at one time. Most importantly, we get to be with people from other countries.”
Many students had been cooking for days, some staying up into the early morning.
“We always think we should do a cookbook,” Karen Bucias, director of International Programs, said. A chicken curry from India is spicy enough to require a glass of water, while rice and red beans wrapped in bamboo leaves – unwrap before you bite! – can transport your tastebuds to China. Saudi Arabia’s table had falafel, a fried chickpea patty eaten throughout the Middle East. There was also a sweet date sauce imported from Alwadi, which can be purchased at the Orono Pharmacy.
Some delicacies, however, are only available in large, cosmopolitan cities. The Asian Student Association sold sweets bought in Boston.
“We went to Super 88,” said Jose Cordero, director of the ALANA Center. “It’s like a huge Asian Sam’s Club. Anything and everything Asian you could possibly imagine. Best trip ever.”
Jing Ling, president of the ASA, said his personal favorites were shrimp crackers and yan yans, which are wafer sticks with a chocolate dip. Ling, a senior computer and electrical engineering major, was born in China. He grew up celebrating the Chinese New Year, when his whole family would get together and eat a vegetarian meal as a “cleansing type of thing.” He plans to return to China in the next few years. “I moved here at a young age. I don’t know a lot about the culture. I’d like to go back to my roots and learn more.”
Family ties are not the only reason people become involved in multicultural organizations. Sarah Joughlin, International Student and Scholar Adviser, put the program together with the help of students starting in mid-September. Increasing numbers of multicultural and international students made the event more exciting. “This year we actually had to turn people away from the talent show,” she said. Attendance has been steady over the past four years; the event usually draws 800-1,000 people from campus and the surrounding community. Echo Patenaude, a senior majoring in landscape horticulture and business, says Culturefest is her favorite international event.
Joughlin said Culturefest started out as a small potluck and then “just got bigger and bigger.”
Karen Bucias has been coming to the event since 1985. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for international students to share their countries,” she said. “It sounds trite, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to do that.”
International Students are not the only ones who benefit. “Culturefest makes American students more aware of the rest of the world,” Bucias said. “It also gets them thinking about studying abroad.”
The climax of Culturefest was the talent show, which featured music and dancing from across three continents. The show opened with a song in Vietnamese. David Croteau sang with his girlfriend Yen Nguyen, even though his first language is English.
Next, a man from Russia and a woman from Uzbekistan performed a dramatic Spanish dance in a style called Basadoble. The mood intensified when they took the stage, and when he swished a red cloth against her shoulders, she came out of her frozen pose and they were on fire. “I’ve never seen Yana Kim so passionate about a dance before,” said Rachel Olivares, a junior education major and belly dancer, about one of the performers.
The soft, sweet strains of a solo in Chinese, which could have been a pop song about love or a lullaby, gave way to an active dance combined from East and West Africa. The dancers were in motion from head to toe-hips shaking, arms and legs in repetitive strokes in time with the rhythm of percussion playing in the background. Although most of the performers dressed in black and white, the result felt very colorful. A girl wearing a pink traditional dress sang a Korean song, while a student from Africa accompanied her playing a drum with his fingers. The show also contained more familiar, but no less stunning, dance styles like flamenco and break dancing.
After a break for a fire alarm was the international fashion show. The last entry was the United States, represented by a girl in jeans swinging a brand-name purse, and a guy dressed in matching black sweats and sporting several flashy metal necklaces. At the end of the runway, they whipped out their cell phones and left the stage dancing to strains of hip hop.
