Spring event blossoms into monthly gathering

There's nothing like tea, cheesecake and good conversation to bring people together. Friday afternoon featured all three, when the Oregon State University Women's Center teemed with a veritable United Nations of women.

Jackie Bangs, of the university's Office of International Education and Outreach, was beaming as she watched the crowd grow. The second monthly International Women's Coffee Hour grew out of an event that Bangs hosted in the spring to celebrate International Women's Week. She asked international faculty members, staff and students what her office could do to support them.

"What they missed most of all (about home) was a place to connect, especially for those who are isolated from their families," Bangs said.

The monthly coffee get-together grew out of that conversation, and attendance has been growing as well.

The Women's Center was a logical location for the monthly event for several reasons, she said.

"We appreciate the welcoming atmosphere, and it also connects international women to what the center is doing." It's also an opportunity for women with different perspectives to share their cultural approaches to women's activism.

Friday afternoon, however, the focus was more on celebration than on activism or politics. Several speakers from the OSU International Cultural Service Program shared and compared their nations' holiday traditions.

Simone Fobi said Christmas and Easter are celebrated in her native Cameroon, but the biggest festival for her ethnic group, the Bafut, is Abine, or the King's Dance, in July.

"We go to the king's palace and dance and have fun," Fobi said. Some community members are given honorary titles, including Fobi's mother, who was once named "Queen Mother," for her ability to pass along wisdom to her people.

Abine is celebrated at the peak of the Cameroon harvest season, and the feast prepared for the event includes corn and peanuts.

"It's very spicy and delicious," Fobi said.

Dinara Andirova of Kazakhstan said that many of her people's traditional ceremonies and customs were lost under Soviet rule, but there are some traditions that have returned to the country since it regained its independence in 1991.

One of the biggest celebrations in Kazakhstan is Nauryz toi, a spring festival celebrated on March 22.

"Day and night are equally divided, and winter days are over," Andirova said. "We congratulate each other with the beginning of spring and nature beginning to blossom."

The streets are filled with costumed residents in elaborate parades, as roaming singers play the dombra, a small lute-like instrument. To pay tribute to Kazakhstan's nomadic roots, some groups build yurts along the road, welcoming people in to feast and celebrate.

Bangs said presentations by students such as Andirova, Fobi and Lier Yeo of Malaysia help to raise cultural awareness and promote dialogue about other countries and customs. It also helps bring a different perspective to a college where 80 percent of the student body is from Oregon.

"We can sometimes get a parochial worldview," she said.