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Africa Night

May 1, 2018 by Zinna Senbetta

It is hard for me to believe that this was my last full month at ISH. The eight months I’ve spent here have flown by! As the weather has slightly warmed up with cherry blossom season, residents have been able to enjoy spring by going back out in the garden. On Saturdays a group of residents takes advantage of the nice weather and go to a nearby field to play soccer. As more of a volleyball person, I joined a local league that has games on Sundays at a gym near ISH. Several of my teammates couldn’t make it for our last game so I recruited a few friends from ISH to fill in.

There were several events at the house this past month starting with Argentina Night. Two Argentinian girls put together a fun evening of dancing and a tasty home made dessert. A week or so later there was an Italian reception in the Great Hall where I met several new residents from Italy and got to try Limoncello, an Italian lemon liquor produced in Southern Italy.

The highlight of the month – and my entire ISH experience – was Africa Night. It was a very fun process to be on the other side of a cultural night. As one of the coordinators I had been planning the event for about a month. Lots of time was put into preparing the food, music, decorations and activities. Between the six of us Africans currently living at ISH, we had representation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan and Ethiopia. We put together a playlist of a variety of African music featuring multiple languages as well as one of my proudest achievements – a 100 slide PowerPoint with fun facts about Africa.

One of the highlights from the night was an Africa trivia game I created using a website called kahoot. Questions were projected on the screen and players responded by selecting the answer on their phones. This picture shows an example of one of the questions (the correct answers are Liberia and Ethiopia). After trivia each of us introduced a dance from our culture. I chose to show an Ethiopian music video about Gojjam, which was a kingdom in Northeastern Ethiopia. The traditional dance in Ethiopia is called eskista, which involves moving your shoulders. Everyone was very engaged with trying the dances, it was a blast!

In reflecting on my time at ISH, hosting Africa Night made it full circle in a way. My earliest involvement with sharing Ethiopian culture at ISH was making a poster about Ethiopian New Year back in September. So I ended up starting and ending my time here with something to share about my Ethiopian heritage. It has been an incredible experience living at ISH during my first year as a graduate student. Living in such a diverse environment with kind, open minded and talented people is something I will never forget!

Filed Under: Inside Look at ISH!, Life at ISH

Zinna Senbetta

About Zinna Senbetta

Country: USA
School: Georgetown University
Field of Study: Global Politics and Security
Bio: Zinna is an Ethiopian-American student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service where she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Global Politics and Security. She is originally from Wheaton, Illinois but most recently lived in New Jersey where she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology with a minor in French Language and Culture at Princeton University. Zinna studied abroad at the Sorbonne University in Paris in the spring of 2016 and interned at an international law NGO in Paris called the Union Internationale des Avocats. The summer of 2016 she was a campaigns intern for the Young African Leaders Initiative Network Program under the Bureau of International Information Programs in Washington, DC. Most recently she was an intern for the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Capitol Hill. Zinna is a 2017 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellow and will focus on Public Diplomacy as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer upon completion of graduate school. She hopes to concentrate on issues related to the rights of women and girls, education, and human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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International Student House of Washington, DC | 1825 R Street, NW | Washington, DC 20009

International Student House of Washington, DC is a private, non-profit 501(c)3 organization located near Dupont Circle in the heart of Washington, DC. Donations will help support our mission to provide an exceptional residential experience to a highly diverse international community of graduate students, interns and visiting scholars. The House promotes inter-cultural dialogue, encourages life-long connections, and fosters global citizenship.

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