As nearly 100 guests trickled into Sayles Hall and sampled exotic Cape Verdean cuisine Friday evening, a live band added to the flavor with traditional music from the island nation. The event opened the Third World Center's Cape Verdean Heritage Weekend, which featured a screening of two documentaries and a presentation on Cape Verdean immigrants in Providence.
"I think the best way to teach people about our culture is to surround them with it," said Samantha Deandrade '12, a Cape Verdean and one of the TWC's student programmers.
The laid-back convocation, titled "Nos Terra, Nos Raiz," began with a keynote address by first-generation Cape Verdean Ana Novais, the executive director of the Rhode Island Department of Health's Division of Community, Family Health and Equity.
The music and festivities were temporarily put on hold while Novais spoke about her cultural background, the social and environmental determinants of health and racial inequality in the American health care system. "We cannot fully enjoy the freedom and democracy we have in the U.S. if we don't have our health," she said.
To provide an example of health care inequality, Novais shared a story about her experience in a Rhode Island hospital emergency room. Her son had broken his arm and needed immediate care, but the hospital was unnecessarily slow to respond because, according to Novais, the staff saw her as "the black woman with dirty clothes and an accent." But when she showed the nurse her badge from the Department of Health, the chief executive officer of the hospital came to apologize and, from that moment, Novais said she "was treated as a queen."
Her speech — which received a standing ovation — was followed by a Cape Verdean dance performed by the troupe Groupu Kola Sao Joao to conclude the event.
The festival, which has been an annual University tradition since 1995, is designed to "build awareness of the Cape Verdean presence both on campus and in the greater community," Deandrade said. Funding and support for the weekend-long cultural celebration came from various sources, including the TWC, the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and the Undergraduate Council of Students.
Claire Andrade-Watkins, a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, showed her documentary "Cape Verdean Pioneers" in the festival on Sunday before the screening of a second film, which told the story of George Lima '48, a Cape Verdean who defied long odds by becoming a black aviator in the mid-20th century. Lima, a lifelong political activist, attended the screening.
