Students experience the Nile Valley

By Dr. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi
Africana and American Indian Studies

As part of the Africana Studies expansion project at Fresno State, Dr. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, professor and coordinator of Africana and American Indian Studies Program, conducted a study tour to Egypt with 14 participants from Dec. 28, 2004 to Jan. 9, 2005. Students earned three units of university credit through Division of Continuing and Global Education.

The participants included three students from the Smittcamp Honors College, three graduate students, one student from U.C. Berkeley, one from CSU Stanislaus, a retired school teacher, and an insurance agent. The academic majors of the participants spanned from Africana studies, history, social work, early childhood education, recreation leisure services management, business administration, mass communications and journalism, and health science. What all these students had in common, though, was their dream to travel to Egypt and experience a different culture with such a deep history. Through readings, site visits and lectures, participants in this winter travel course examined the historical, metaphysical, scientific, artistic and cultural aspects of the Nile Valley Civilization in Egypt.

For 12 days, we traveled the entire country from Alexandria to Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel, exploring the historical and contemporary links of the Nile valley civilization to the rest of Africa, the African Diaspora, the Arab-Islamic World and the Western World.

We traveled by airplane, sleeper train, cruise ship, bus, camel, horse carriage, traditional sailing boat (felucca), motor boat, carts and hot-air balloon. We began our adventure in Cairo with an introduction to 3,000 years of Egypt’s earliest history at the Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo, visited the “mummy” room, the famous Pyramids of Giza, and the Sphinx.

We continued down south with visits to the Temples of Luxor, Karnak, Kom Ombo, Philae, Abu Sumbel, the Valley of the Kings, Queen Hatshepsut at El-Deir El-Bahari, Colossi of Memnon, the Nubian Museum and the Nubian village. Finally, we headed north to the shores of the Mediterranean sea with a day’s visit to Alexandria, the city that embodies the fusion of the African, Greek and Roman civilizations of the ancient world.

Commenting on the outcome of the trip to Egypt, Tony Simone a business major said: “It feels good to be back home, and …I want to go back [to Egypt]… Thank you for the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The next study tour to Africa will be July 6-20, 2005. The travel course titled, “ Ghana: The Land of Our Ancestors,” is also being led by Dr. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi. Informational sessions for the summer course will be held on Wednesday, Feb, 23, and Friday, March 11, at 6:30 p.m. in the Education Building, room 140. Contact Oheneba-Sakyi at  8-4423 or email yoheneba@csufresno.edu for further details.