Students serve up cultural feast Africa comes to U.S. at UMaine dinner

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ORONO – Baba Cham, a University of Maine sustainable agriculture major from the West African nation of Gambia, has lived in Maine for almost a decade. In that time, he has learned to cook spaghetti and French toast and speak fluent, unaccented English.

When Cham speaks of his childhood in Gambia, however, he is overcome with memories, enthusiasm and longing.

“You play soccer a lot, play tag, chase each other,” he said. “Climbing trees and stuff is another big thing. There are mango trees, guava trees, papaya trees, grapefruit, mandarin, avocado and coconut. The goal is to climb high enough to get the fruit no one else has gotten.”

Cham is president of the year-old African Student Association at UMaine, a group formed from the 30 or so undergraduate and graduate students who hail from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Rwanda, Togo, Sudan, Morocco, Tanzania, Gambia, Uganda and Namibia.

The AfSA has done presentations for Culture Fest in late October and raised money to support refugees in Sudan, among other activities. The organization is also a vehicle for students to gather to enjoy a

culture that can feel very far away from Maine’s cold winters and lack of ethnic diversity.

“I miss hanging around with my buddies and with people in general,” Cham said. “More than anything, I think that’s what African culture is all about. Hanging around with your friends, just talking.”

Cham, a cheerful sight in his country’s traditional garb of a loose cotton print caftan worn over matching trousers, had the opportunity to do just that Sunday night at an African food and culture meal sponsored by the Fogler Library Friends at the library.

The University Club’s walls were festooned with African flags, and elegant wooden carvings served as centerpieces. Mainers and Africans chatted together as they waited for the food to be served. And fragrant smells of roasted meat, spices and peanut sauce drifted throughout the room, punctuating every sentence and casting an exotic warmth over the chilly November night.

The meal featured dishes from West and East African nations, including beans, peanut sauce and chicken with plantains from Cameroon, beef stew and chapatis from Kenya and Somalian rice.

Attendees eagerly anticipated broadening their culinary palates.

“I love different kinds of food and the opportunity to try something different,” Debe Averill of Orono said. “I think Americans are very dull about food in general.”

Her daughter Sarah, 15, agreed.

“I was happy to come when my mom told me about it,” she said.

The AfSA’s women members had cooked all day long to feed the crowd, and many had the exhausted but satisfied look of having done a hard job very well.

“I like cooking. I like cooking food for people so that they can taste our food,” 33-year-old Lucie Ndzana Hutchins of Cameroon said. “It’s really like a big family. You have the feeling that you are home together with all these girls and all these boys. You laugh … I like being with them.”

Hutchins, a former UM student who now works at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, is a skilled chef who prepared many of the main dishes as well as a potent hot sauce. She said she learned to cook from her mother. They belong to the Ewondo tribe, one of more than 400 tribes in Cameroon.

Anne Akoa, 19, is another Ewondo from Cameroon who learned how to cook from her mother by a magical-sounding process.

“I never cooked back home for some reason,” she said. “When I came here, I found out I knew how to cook, which was strange … I just watched her and knew what to do.”

Akoa has been in Maine for two years and enjoyed the taste of Africa the meal and the companionship.

“It’s all about being together,” she said.

Celebrations back home for weddings and other important life events are long and centered on family and friends laughing, talking and feasting together.

“Usually the meal goes on the whole day and the whole night,” she said wistfully. “Just families together. I miss that – everybody’s really close. And then people usually leave the next day. The stomach has to be full. That’s Africa.”

The feeling of closeness sparked by sharing a meal and conversation is what Gretchen Gfeller, coordinator of the Fogler Library Friends group, sought in holding the international dinner series.

“The preparation and sharing of food is often very central to a culture,” she said. “We discovered that inviting people to take part in this promotes understanding and erases stereotypes.”

Karen Boucias, director of the office of International Programs and National Student Exchange at UMaine, says fostering those ties is crucial in today’s terror-laced world.

“Our international students bring a worldwide perspective,” Boucias said. “We’d love to see more international students, and we hope that we can do that because the world is getting smaller and it’s important for us to get to know each other.”

Boucias says international student enrollment is down at UM and across the nation.

The Institute for International Education recently released its annual report on student mobility, funded by the U.S. State Department. The institute found that total foreign student enrollment at 2,700 accredited institutions fell by 2.4 percent in the fall term last year, which is the first drop since 1971.

At UM, foreign student enrollment fell 5 percent this fall. International students this semester account for 390 of the 11,000 undergraduate and graduate student population. That compares with 411 international students in 2003-04.

The nationwide drop is attributed in part to the security crackdown and difficulty in obtaining U.S. visas.

“Nationally, there were 56,000 fewer visas granted this year than last year,” Boucias said. “We in international education are distressed at this turn of events, that it’s becoming more difficult to the point where students are applying in greater numbers to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.”

Some African students at UM say fear of losing their visas has kept them from leaving the United States and traveling home. High airfares are another factor.

This may explain why the Africans were so glad to cook for hours, decorate the University Club, dress up in traditional finery and share their cultures with an appreciative audience.

“It was really fun,” Akoa said after the meal. “All the Africans, we just got together. We did it together.”

Abigail Curtis can be reached at abigail.curtis@umit.maine.edu.