Norwich celebrates diversity through food, song and awards
Restaurants, cultural and music groups go all out Monday
Norwich — State Troubadour Nekita Waller meant to sing with a microphone and a musical track, but when the mic cut out, Waller came alive, working her way through the multicultural crowd at Norwich Harbor, dancing with an elderly Chinese woman, greeting VIPs and people wearing bright-colored turbans, eating Punjabi rice and potatoes or Lebanese baklava.
“I’m proud to say I’m Connecticut born and Connecticut raised,” Waller sang a capella, coaxing the audience to join in the chorus. “You can love it or leave it, but it’s a state that I believe in.”
This was exactly what Norwich Rotary and a host of other sponsors hoped for when they established the annual Celebrate Diversity event six years ago. Sixteen different restaurants, churches and ethnic civic groups offered tastes of their traditions, including dishes from China, Korea, India, the southern United States and Poland.
“They’re having a big Polish festival here on the 21st,” one man said of the planned Oct. 21 festival, sharing a Babka bread with a friend.
Festivals and the Rotary Celebrate Diversity event aside, residents in and around Norwich get many chances to sample the fare offered Monday. Royal Punjabi Restaurant on Main Street brought Aloo Mattar, a mixture of peas, rice, potatoes and herbs from its regular menu, and Devine Providence Church at 40 Golden St. in Greeneville, which brought the Polish bread, also hosts Taste of Poland every second Friday from 5 to 7 p.m.
Fire & Ice Asian Cuisine at 85 Main St. didn’t quite bring the proverbial left side of the menu, but brought seven dishes from its extensive menu, from sushi to noodles, and Green Dragon Roll — “avocado on the inside, eel and cucumber on top,” the menu said.
Norwich Public Schools and
the Norwich Public Schools Education Foundation set up several different colored mats on the grass in front of their booths, where volunteers read children’s books to young festival attendees.
Children also got lessons in making a Guatemalan Worry Doll. According to legend, Guatemalan children tell one worry to each doll, place the doll under their pillow and “in the morning, the dolls have taken their worries away,” the description with tiny dolls handed out stated.
The foundation offered free children’s books to families, and at a nearby table Otis Library gave away free children’s and adult books, some in foreign languages.
Swaranjit Singh Khalsa, a member of the Connecticut Sikh Association, said he recently discovered that Otis Library was lacking in books on Sikh history and culture. Khalsa rectified that Monday, with a quiet off-stage presentation of “The Guru’s Word & Illustrated Sikh History” by Santokh Singh, to Bassem Gayed, multicultural services coordinator at Otis.
A few minutes later, Gayed took the stage officially as the 2018 recipient of the Rotary’s Lottie B. Scott Diversity Award presentation. The award was launched six years ago to promote Norwich’s cultural diversity. The award is named for longtime Norwich arts and Civil Rights advocate, who presented the award Monday to Gayed.
Through his position, Gayed launched English language learning programs as well as citizenship classes while working to expand foreign language books and the digital collection at Otis. Gayed, who was born in Egypt, started working at Otis in 2008 and was named to his current position in 2015.
Norwich Rotary also presented the third annual Community Diversity Award to Dan Topalis, owner of The Gallery at the Wauregan, honoring the gallery for promoting the works of diverse artists and cultural diversity through the arts. The gallery is open seven days a week and has become an unofficial downtown welcome center.
“You all know it’s a people’s gallery,” Topalis said to the crowd. “It will always be a people’s gallery, and I hope to see you all there.”