Culture showcase
Food, arts, music highlight Columbus African Festival
Yaw Asamoah of Dublin was born in the West African nation of Ghana but has lived in central Ohio for 20 years. h He retains a trace of an accent as he talked Saturday about the vibrant Ankara cotton clothing he was selling at the Columbus African Festival at Franklin Park Saturday. He also displayed glass jewelry, footwear and traditional hourglass-shaped drums, as well as bags and baskets woven from tropical elephant grass. h Asamoah has seen the West African community grow in the Columbus area over recent years.
“A lot of people headed out of New York,” he said. “When Ohio started booming, people headed here.”
A number of them likely attended the festival on Saturday. The event is aimed at encouraging the African arts in the Columbus community and exposing African culture to Greater Columbus residents.
Reginald Rowland is on the festival’s board. Many know that Columbus is home to the second-largest Somali community in the U.S., behind only the Minneapolis-st. Paul area.
Rowland said the city is also becoming home to people from other African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Senegal and Sierra
Leone.
Astrid Coffi, a native of Senegal and now a Grove City resident, said most of the items she sells are handmade, including clothing, jewelry and accessories. She makes some items, while others are done by a group she knows in Senegal. On Saturday she held a brown soapstone plate with etchings she did herself.
She hopes the festival helps bring exposure to the African community here.
“The African community is not out there enough,” Coffi said.
The festival showcased the flags of all 52
African nations, Rowland said, and featured poetry, music, dance, arts and crafts. Several food trucks were also on hand to serve hungry patrons.
One of those food trucks, Fork of Nigeria, is owned by the festival board's chair, Bartholomew Shepkong.
He said the festival was moved from Columbus' Northeast Side, where the first festival was held at Innis Park in 2019, to Franklin Park because it is more centrally located. Organizers did not hold the festival in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Shepkong, a professor of cultural diversity and sociology at Central Ohio Technical College in Newark,
The first festival drew about 1,000 visitors, and Shepkong hoped to better that in 2021.
“I'm hoping people will see and learn about the African culture,” said Shepkong, a Bexley resident who came to the Columbus area from Chicago in 2014.
One reason he came here was because the family of his wife, Gachomo Mapis, another festival board member, lived here. But he also said the cost of living was cheaper in Columbus. And he said it is growing more diverse, with native West Africans coming here from other parts of the U.S.
“For me it's highly welcoming,” Shepkong said.
Fork of Africa serves stews with ingredients such as okra, Nigerian jollof rice, fufu (a dough) and chicken, beef and goat.
Yannick Tuwamo of Gahanna, who came to Columbus earlier this year from North Carolina, waited in line at the truck. His parents are Congolese, and he had already purchased a traditional black-and-brown African outfit that he carried in a bag in the back of his child's stroller.
“I definitely like a festival around Africa,” he said.
Asamoah said he expected festivalgoers to appreciate what comes out of Africa, a continent increasingly becoming familiar to Americans.
“The world has become a very small global village,” he said. “Technology has made it so,” mferench@dispatch.com @Markferenchik