Students visiting Muskogee High School’s Cultural Fair on Thursday found the world handed to them on paper plates.

They tasted American apple pie, Italian tiramisu, Russian stroganoff, Guatemalan plantains, Irish soda bread. They also found other ways to sample world cultures, such as having names written in Chinese and watching a demonstration of a Cherokee blowgun.

The gastronomic audio and visual samples of 24 cultures were offered at the Cultural Fair: Bridging the Gap Between Cultures, sponsored by the MHS social studies department. The fair, held at the MHS media center, was geared to encouraging cultural awareness and to unite the various cultures at MHS.

“We had second- and fifth-graders from Harris-Jobe Elementary and they had a ball,” said Dianne Hill, who teaches Native American and African American history at MHS.

Second-graders Ali Hime and Hailey Davis found several ways to explore the world. Each had a name tag with their special Chinese name.

“This one means ‘little girl.’ It says ‘ya,’” Ali said.

The girls, and many other girls and women at the fair, wore tiny beads on their foreheads. They got the beads from the India booth, manned by MHS students Janni Gandhi, Neel Naik and Nidhi Patel.

“It’s called a bindi,” said Janni, an 11th-grader. “It used to symbolize marriage, but now it’s just a fashion statement.”

The grade school visitors to the China booth got to make part of the Great Wall of China with tiny foam blocks.

Though the fair drew crowds from Harris-Jobe and MHS, booths offering food drew the most visitors.

“Don’t miss the puerco tamales,” said MHS media specialist Jennifer Kilgore. “This student’s mother makes them, and they are wonderful. They ran out of the stroganoff at the Russian booth. That was popular.”

MHS senior Chelsey Puckett, who wore a plaid skirt and tam o’shanter, gave a rundown of ingredients for the cheese scones served at the Scottish booth.

“They have cheese, flour, baking soda, mustard and chili powder,” she said. “The chili has a little kick to it that hits you after a while.”

But, why didn’t the Puckett’s booth serve haggis? It’s a traditional Scottish dish featuring the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, minced with onion and oatmeal and stuffed in stomach skin.

“We didn’t think haggis would go over with the kids,” Puckett said.

At the Guatemalan booth, MHS junior Hugo Arteaga and friends served nuggets of plantains and black beans, with sugar on top.

A native of Guatemala, Arteaga said the one thing people don’t understand about his country is “When they see us, they get us confused with Mexicans.”

“Some of our words are very different,” he said.

Students in Nancy Hightower’s Advanced Placement European history class manned the European booths. Latin students had a booth about ancient Rome.

Hill’s students in her Native American history class manned booths representing various cultures including Creek, Sioux, Seminole, Arapaho and Osage.

MHS teachers Jack Reavis and David Walkingstick demonstrated a Cherokee blowgun, blowing darts into the cardboard backing of the Cherokee booth. After most people left, the teachers blew darts into the cardboard backing of the European booths.



Reach Cathy Spaulding at 918-684-2928 or Click Here to Send Email