I have been researching my ancestral makeup even more since I received the results from my first DNA test one month ago. I thought that everything would end once I received the results. I was wrong. While the results answered a lot of questions, they left me with even more.
I had gone on to run several more tests in addition to reading several books and academic research papers. Everything points to Yoruba making up the biggest part of me. Now it is time to embrace my heritage.
I decided to get a Yoruba name. There are several articles and sites about naming Yoruba babies. The names tend to have beautiful meanings. Choosing one was not difficult for me. But I also needed a last name.
None of those sites or articles were for last names. It was not so easy for me to find a last name. I went to one of the Nigerian forums and asked for assistance. The guys were nice and welcoming. One guy suggested a name that I really like. The meaning, when combined with my first name, tells my story.
Ogooluwa Omobowole
This name can be translated as “By God’s glory, the child has returned home.” This adequately describes my long search for my ethnic roots which were stolen from my ancestors. Growing up only knowing that my African side “came from West Africa” left me feeling empty. I had no trouble learning about my non-African roots, but the African roots remained shrouded in mystery.
West Africa is a huge place. There are close to 400-million people residing in West Africa. Just over a decade ago, I had learned that the majority of Africans brought to Jamaica during the Transatlantic Slave Trade were from present-day Ghana and Nigeria. That narrowed things down a bit. But Nigeria and Ghana combine for a population of over 247-million people spread over more than 250 ethnic groups.
My years of research have finally paid off. Thanks to historians and advances in technology, I now know that I am mostly of Yoruba heritage. I also share roots with the Akan from Ghana, Igbo and Edo (Bini), from Nigeria, and Mende from Sierra Leone among others. Of this ethnic potpourri, Yoruba makes up the largest portion of my being by far.
Now that I can trace my roots down to ethnicities, I feel like I have finally found my home. I may not have returned home physically yet, but spiritually, I have returned home. My next plan is a trip to Nigeria! As a matter of fact, since Yorubaland spans 3 nations, I should plan a trip to Nigeria, Benin, and Togo!
I just had to do more research after my last post. Discovering that I am “52% Nigerian” was not enough for me. Being 22% “Ghanaian, Liberian & Sierra Leonean” was even worse as those are 3 seperate countries.
I took another test which broke things down to an ethnic level. As it turns out, I am 26% Yoruba, 20% Esan, and 7% Igbo. That represents the Nigerian side. I am also 7% Akan and 7% Kassena, which represents the Ghanaian side. I am also 8% Mende from Sierra Leone.
Overall, the 3 ethnicities which make up the largest portions of me are Yoruba, Esan, and Mende, in that order.
I love all of my ethnicities. I am proud of all of my rich cultures. Since Yoruba is my biggest portion, I have been learning about Yoruba culture. I have also been studying the Esan culture which makes up my second-biggest portion.
I will definitely study the rest of my cultures… Mende, Akan, Mossi, Kassena, etc. For starters, I will focus on those cultures which make up the largest portion of my mixed ethnicity.
Learning about this has left me feeling reborn. All my life, I had carried this pain and anguish of not knowing who my African ancestors were. Not knowing my very own ethnic makeup. I knew of my European side. I knew of my Arab side. I knew of my Jewish side. But my African side was a mystery due to the horrors of the Maafa. Slowly but surely as I studied and researched, the African side started to narrow down. First, West Africa, then mainly Nigeria and Ghana, and now, a group of beautiful people.
I recently purchased a lot more books. I should get back to reading instead of typing away at this blog. See you soon!
I received my DNA results April 13! That was fast. It only took 10 days for them to do their magic and hopefully answer my many questions.
The first thing I did that morning was check my smartphone to see if the results were ready. To my surprise, they were! At first, I did not want to look before getting ready for work. I kind of wanted to wait until after work. As I was closing the app, I saw 52% somewhere on the screen.
Noooo!
I do not wanna spoil this yet!
I put down the phone and went to the washroom to do my morning routine. While in the shower, I just could not get that number out of my head.
52%?
Which ethnicity?
Or did they mean they were only 52% complete, hence why I did not get an actual notification?
I dunno if I can last through a whole day at work not knowing.
While eating breakfast, I decided that I could not wait any longer. I would have been able to wait had I not seen that 52% number. I picked up the phone and opened the app.
52% Nigerian!
Wow! I was not expecting my Nigerian side to be this high. I had assumed it would be between 20 and 30% along with Ghanaian at a similar percentage. I estimated it would skew towards one side more than the other.
23andMe Results: 52% Nigerian
22% Ghanaian, Liberian & Sierra Leonean!
Yay! I had known that the vast majority of Africans brought to Jamaica were from what became present-day Ghana and Nigeria. I was worried that I might not get one of the two places I have been learning so much about. I was more afraid that I would only have a small percentage of Nigerian… which would hurt because I have been into Nigerian culture since childhood. More on that in a bit.
23andMe Results: 22% Ghanaian, Liberian, & Sierra Leonean
My remaining results produced a shock which sent me into a depressed state. It left me questioning what I knew about myself all these years. I was horrified to not see any mention of Levant or Portugal/Spain. What happened to my grandfather and great-grandmother’s DNA? Was it all a dream? A lie? No. Mom would never lie to me.
I was a little surprised to find 9% British and Irish, but not too surprised given the history of Jamaica. I had just never factored that into my calculations despite being aware of the possibility.
I spent every free moment over the next 48 hours researching to find out:
What happened to my Arab/Levant ethnicity from my great-grandmother?
What happened to my Sephardi Jew (Spain/Portugal) ethnicity from my grandfather?
Where in Nigeria were my ancestors from? Am I descended from the Igbos? Am I descended from the Yoruba? Am I descended from the Efik people? What am I?
I waited a long time to get some confirmation of my ethnic makeup only to be left with even more questions. During my frantic post-results research, I learned that we don’t pass down our DNA in a straight-forward way like we expect. It appears that the Levantine and Jewish part of my family did not make it all the way down to me. That still does not mean that I do not have those ethnicities.
I learned that each parent gives 50% of their DNA to their child. But that 50% is not evenly passed on. For example, say one parent was 50% Italian, 25% Spanish, and 25% Egyptian and the other parent was whatever they were. The 50% that was passed on from this parent would not yield 25% Italian, 12.5% Spanish, and 12.5% Egyptian in the child. The proportion does not go across evenly and could even leave out some ethnicities, or only send a very small amount.
I am however, pleased to discover that I am even more African than initially thought. I had been estimating myself to be no more than 67-70% African. These test results state that I am in fact 81.5% African and 13.9% European!
While I am sad to not see Levantine Arab and Sephardi Jew in my profile, I am elated to see my Nigerian and Ghanaian confirmed. I am pleasantly surprised to find myself at 52% Nigerian!
As for the Arab and Jew, the results do show a trace of Ashkenazi Jew and North African.
I was also surprised to find 2% Native American. I had thought the natives in Jamaica had become extinct. I did some research over the last two days and found that the surviving Tainos had lived with the Maroons in the mountainous semi-autonomous region of Jamaica. They had mixed in with them and I suppose over the years, we were left with extremely few if any, full-blooded Taino people on the island. This is all starting to make sense to me especially knowing that most of the Maroons were from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana).
Now for the last part…. my actual ethnic origins from Nigeria and Ghana. I can be fairly confident that my Ghanaian side is from the Akan people based on what I have read about them in Jamaica. I am fairly confident that my Nigerian side is Igbo due to the fact that records indicate the vast majority of Africans who were brought to Jamaica were from the Bight of Biafra and the Gold Coast.
Jamaica map
Jamaican Patois language is filled with Akan and Igbo words, along with others. There are a lot of African traditions that survived the colonizers attempts to strip us of our culture. A major portion of them are Igbo and Akan in origin.
When I was a child, bombarded with bad and false news about Africa, I met my first true African friends. Through them, I learned that Lagos, Nigeria was a big, modern metropolis. Until that time, I was led to believe that such cities do not exist in Africa.
I learned a lot from those boys. The family was of Igbo origin. This is where my love for Nigeria began… many, many years before I found out that most Jamaicans trace some their roots to Nigeria.
I only started to learn about Ghana in more recent years. I think Ghanaians and Nigerians are fascinating people. I think all people are fascinating to be honest, but once I learned of the possibility of me tracing my roots to those two nations, my interest in their cultures grew exponentially.
With all that I knew about my family history, I was not expecting to find any one ethnicity comprising over 50% of me. I guess I can consider myself Nigerian since that represents 52% of me. I also like the term West African, which represents 77% of me. I have considered myself West African since high school.
Exciting times are ahead as I continue my research and learn more about my newly-confirmed ethnicities.
