The year was 2020. The world went insane due to an unprecedented pandemic. Most lives were affected in one way or another.
Here in Canada, everything besides essential services had to shut down. I was isolated in my condo with nowhere to go. I was fortunate to be able to work from home to keep busy. I could not go downstairs to swim or workout at our gym. I could not go to the local bars to socialize with my friends. There was nothing to do besides work and sleep.
I am thankful that our company was able to transition to working from home. Some of my friends were not so lucky. Their workplaces had to shut down completely. There is no way to transition all jobs to work from home. Some of my friends left the country to return to their families.
The days that followed are now referred to by me as the “Dark Days”. Those days were all-around awful for me and several of my friends. I fell into a deep state of depression.
Depression had me wondering if it was worth suffering through the isolation when in fact we had no idea if it would ever end. I started having dark thoughts. I told myself that if the rest of my life had to be lived this way, I might not want to continue living.
During those weeks, outside of work, I watched more videos on YouTube than ever before. I was able to live vicariously through the YouTube presenters. Watching videos from other countries which was not as severely affected or locked down saved me from going insane.
I enjoyed every moment brought to my screens by the various players in the YouTube community. I would like to thank the wonderful hosts who have brought information and joy to my life since before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and today.
These YouTubers taught me a lot about the Motherland and allowed me to explore virtually. The experience increased my hunger for travel and learning about my ethnicity. We were shown the Africa that mainstream Western media does not want us to see.
Please take some time to visit these channels hosted by incredible people.
I would like to thank each and every one of these wonderful people for helping me get through those Dark Days.
An honorable mention goes out to a new YouTuber, one whose channel did not exist during the Dark Days. This young lady is on her way to becoming a fantastic videographer and journalist. Please check out Lateefah Mayaki‘s channel for some excellent stories and reports on life in Lagos, Nigeria.
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.
I remember growing up in Canada hearing nothing but negative things about my ancestral home. Africa was referred to as the “Dark Continent” and a place where there was wide-spread poverty, disease, and uncivilized people.
As a child, to be called an African was an insult. We did not know any better. We were children who were living in the West, bombarded with negative stereotypes of the Motherland. Africa was only ever shown negatively in the media.
The poisoning of our minds began as soon as we were old enough to watch TV, or read newspapers and magazines. Every single thing we saw about Africa was bad. We were fed a steady diet of two images… war and famine. African jokes were heard everywhere from the streets to television.
I remember as a young child wondering why animal shows such as Wild Kingdom would have entire episodes devoted to observing some tribe living in a very traditional setting. I wondered why most episodes were about animals, yet some were about people. Did they perhaps look at these people as animals? This had a profound impact in the minds of young children all over the Americas. We were made to believe that all Africans lived this way.
During the 1980s, the media was bombarded with photos and videos of starving children in Ethiopia during the famine. Several pop stars came together and held a concert to raise funds to save the children. Songs were made in an effort to raise money. One such song was called, “Do they know it’s Christmas in Africa?” Really? This lead to the stereotype that all Ethiopians were suffering from famine. Jokes were made about Ethiopians. The jokes continued right through the nineties.
I remember one evening after school, while hanging out with friends at the mall food court, a girl mentioned Africa. I told her that I was not African. She then reminded me that my parents were from Jamaica and that the vast majority of Jamaicans trace their ancestry to Africa.
This had a profound impact on me. Here I was, brainwashed into being ashamed of Africa, and being reminded by a non-African girl that I truly am African and it is nothing to be ashamed of. We have been stripped of our very identity by those who enslaved us not too long ago. Slavery as is discussed in the West only ended around 160 years ago. In terms of history, that might as well be considered yesterday.
From that day on, I stopped feeling ashamed about Africa and started to read about the so-called Dark Continent. I learned about the beauty of the continent where my ancestors came from… a place rich in history and culture. A place which should have been my home all along.
Hip Hop culture started to embrace a pan-African spirit which lead to us kids feeling pride in Africa. We read all the books we could get our hands on. It became quite common to see guys wearing medallions in the shape of the continent of Africa. At the time, I had an Indian friend who also embraced pan-Africanism but wore a medallion shaped like the Indian subcontinent.
Somehow, hip hop took a turn for the worse and gone is the pan-African talk replaced by gangsterism and sex. I cannot stereotype the entire genre though. A lot of good hip hop is still being made, but it does not receive the attention or exposure that the other stuff does. It seems to be by design.
Fast forward to the 2020s when Africans have taken to YouTube to show the wonderful continent to the world. They are showing us the real life and not the stereotypical nonsense that we are usually fed by the Western media. We are now able to see the true Africa from the comfort of our homes. Now, more than ever, Afro-descended people in the West are starting to visit or even move to Africa.
I have been doing research into my African roots and found that most of my ethnicity can be traced back to the Yoruba, Edo, and Igbo, of what is now Nigeria, the Akans of what is now Ghana, and the Mende from Sierra Leone. I also have Welsh and Norwegian ancestry, so I have a lot more history to study.
I started to research these cultures online and discovered a thriving African YouTube community spearheaded by young men and women who are driven to present their continent in a true light.
The most well-known of these YouTubers goes by the name Wode Maya. I first stumbled upon his channel when he was studying engineering in China. I was fascinated by his command of the Chinese language. Watching him inspired me to keep studying the languages that I was studying at that time.
He eventually left China and went on a tour of Africa launching an initiative to bring Africa to the World. His videos during those trips made me want to visit Africa more than ever before. Wode Maya has done exponentially well at promoting the beauty of the African continent to the world.
The African continent, also known as The Motherland, has a very rich history and culture. The people are warm and inviting. The scenery is breathtaking and city life is vibrant. The quaint villages are peaceful oasis of calm life nestled in some of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.
I have been watching videos from a growing number of African YouTube stars such as Virtue Grace, Tayo Aina, Bayo Adio, and others. My list keeps growing as I discover more and more channels.
I also watch Arise TV and Channels Television for my daily fix of Nigerian news. These two networks are fantastic and keep us in the know about all things happening in Nigeria.
If the Internet were around during our childhood, we would not have been so easily fooled into believing all the negativity that was spread about Africa. Since high school, I had been studying African history and culture via books from the library and the Internet.
Stay tuned for articles about Africa and these wonderful people who are transforming our lovely continent into a must-go destination. The world truly is a beautiful place. All continents are filled with beauty and culture. I would love to tour the entire planet.
