How many people attended last year’s iFest? How many will attend this April’s iFest? The answer to both questions is the same: we don’t know. There are three reasons we refuse to estimate attendance.

1. Others jack up the numbers so unbelievably high that an accurate count would make an honest assessment look paltry.

2. To play the bloated numbers game can get you in big trouble with the media.

3. To play the bloated numbers game can invite the general public to multiply that big number by the ticket price and, thereby, deduce that we are far richer than we actually are.

One sister event here in Texas once claimed that they expected 3.5 million visitors to their annual event (see, e.g., article)

They didn’t say how they knew in advance how they knew this amazing factoid. Their city population is not even 3.5 million. If anyone had bothered to do the math they would have found that.

1. There were nowhere near enough hotel rooms, porta johns, etc. to accommodate 3.5 million people.

2. The National Guard would have to be called out to control the huge mobs of people roaming the streets in search of sustenance.

3. Since this number of people exceeds the air traffic capacity coming into the city, there would have to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of extra cars on the road, which would mean gridlock at every intersection and a completely immobilized city.

To my knowledge no reporter bothered to ask the event to substantiate their 3.5 million visitor claim. That is why iFest decided long ago not to play the visitor-estimate game. It is a lose-lose proposition.

The question we are sure to get when teachers read our curriculum guide or when visitors go to our Chevron Living Museum is this: slavery is such a sensitive topic; why does a festival need to address that subject?  We were well aware that there might be questioning or even criticism of our addressing the sensitive subject of slavery in the Americas.

There are three reasons we felt compelled to tell the story of the forced migration of Africans to the Americas:

1. First, our theme is “Out of Africa: the three journeys.” In other words, our central subject is concerned with the vast and wide-ranging cultural influences that people of African origin had on every aspect of life in the Americas. To ignore the forced migration and enslavement of Africans is to avoid telling the true story alluded to by the theme.

2. Second, iFest is a not-for-profit organization, which means the IRS views us as an educational organization. Those of you who have studied or use our curriculum guide each year are well aware of this. And those of you who have visited our deeply cultural living museum on site also know this is true. Failure to investigate slavery would be a failure of our educational mission - once again, given our theme.

3. Expanding on the second reason, we’ve asked a stellar committee of African scholars to oversee our written materials and our programming, especially with respect to the living museum on site. I do not believe the scholars would have considered our project worthy of their time and expertise if we had suggested ignoring difficult issues. Those of you who have been fans of iFest already know that we take our educational underpinnings very seriously.

We take it as our job to tell as full story as possible about our theme each year. This may be why iFest has been cited is the most significant cultural celebration for a general public in America.

For a more thorough investigation of our theme, you could go to the book that inspired our curriculum guide and our programming on site: Africans in the Americas, by Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis.

Marvin Gaye’s motown question of almost 40 years ago is relevant now. And it all has to do with Africa. Everywhere you look nowadays, it’s Africa.

Jeffery Sachs is hanging out with Bono all over the place talking about ending poverty in Africa (see Mother Jones article).

Three point two million year-old Lucy comes to Houston and 150,000 folks go through the exhibit (see our Curriculum Guide, p. 19 - 32).

Local business man, Mark Bent, invents a solar-powered flash light to help African villiagers and he gets praise from the New York Times, Newsweek and so forth (see our Curriculum Guide, p. 170 - 181).

Houston’s own Marathon Oil sponsors the iFest Business Conference on Africa in order to tell their story about mosquito eradication in Equitorial Guinea .

Twelve hundred pleople flood the Houston Hilton ballroom to hear Dr. Cornel West deliver a rousing and brilliant speech about the enslavement and the forced-migration of Africans to the Americas and the culture they brought with them - and who shows up but Snoop Dogg?

I think it’s gotta be the Obama phenomenon. That’s what’s goin’ on.

Photo posted on Flickr by: sai0ne

Kati Ozanic, our site artist, is putting the finishing touches on this year’s living museum for iFest.  You may recall the replica of the Great Wall of China at last year’s iFest.  Kati and her wild-and-crazy Austrian husband, Yolle, built that much-photographed edifice.  It was extremely popular.  Right now it is in South Texas and is the featured highlight of Borderfest.

This year’s living museum will depict the three diasporas of the African people (see iFest for the explanation).  The key element of the living museum will be a replica of one of the stone churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia.  It was built in the 12th century by the Christian - yes, Christianity was in Africa long before colinization - Emperor Lalibela.

The fascinating thing about it is this: it was once a mountain.  Emperor Lalibela had his minions carve out the inside and outside of 11 mountains.  The most famous, which is still being used as an active Christian church, is the Beta Gyorgis (the church of St. George). Ethiopians cite this as the eighth wonder of the world (see this link).

Our replica will be 22 feet high and surrounded by a faux mountain. You’ll be able to walk into it and experience it as some Lalibelans do with the origional in Ethiopia today.

I don’t believe anything quite like it has been done at any event in the US before. Am I right?

Flickr Photo by Ashley England