Dr. Rosalyn | Learning More About Myself
I often tell people that I learn more about myself when I'm forced into new circumstances or situations. Traveling abroad lets me know how centered and calm I can be in the right environment and what challenges my senses and piques my interests. My family's story has been one of the things that has captivated me and led me to give Ancestry.com way more cash than I should have, just joking, to try to do some digging there. I've been able to confirm some family history through my grandparents and their parents but it's sketchy at best and lacking a lot of official documents because of how the state we come from operates and just how old all of those individuals are or were. A lot of them were never officially tracked before they appeared on a census. No birth certificates and death certificates can be unreliable because year of birth was a verbal memory and could be wholly inaccurate. I found that out when the state offered to create my grandmother's birth certificate for me when they couldn't locate one. All that to say genealogy has been rough going for myself my brother and cousin who are trying to dig into it.
I was excited initially about Ancestry.com being able to tell me more about who I am. Except I read their TOS and a few other things and went well that's just creepy so no. Same thing with 23 and Me and a few others. Plus the Golden State Killer was ultimately traced through companies that don't let you protect your DNA from public search or who don't agree to destroy it. I haven't taken anyone out but the other companies expressly said they would comply with a subpoena regarding DNA so that was a non starter for me in my watching too much ID Network mind. I've said as recently as six months ago I just would have to skip it until I stumbled upon National Geographic's Helix testing option and African Ancestry's very blatant statement that they did almost nothing the same way as Ancestry.com did. I looked into both for at least three months before I bit the bullet and bought each test (thankful for a sale at African Ancestry) for myself and my brother. You may wonder why my brother too well because my DNA can't give me dad's information so I need a close male relative--hi brother--in order to get the information for my whole background. I was clearly more excited than he was because I did mine immediately. I'm just writing this post because the African Ancestry test took about a month longer to come in.
NatGeo took about four weeks to process and tell me that well basically I'm super chocolate. My profile is nearly 90 percent West African with a dash of Eastern European, Central and South African to round it out. The profile most closely aligns to the Yoruba people in Nigeria with a second place profile matching people from Senegal. I also have an apparently rare subtype present in the profile that migrated from Africa due to the slave trade. AfAncestry took about two months to process and said that my profile most closely resembled the Mende people of Sierra Leone. No other sub types or possible options which wasn't totally surprising based on how they tend to work up their profiles. I've seen very few people with more than one group. But clearly Sierra Leone is not Nigeria or Senegal but I can't claim to be well versed in African country location so after pulling up a map the two tests combined just reaffirmed the super chocolate status. The countries are located along the same band of Western Africa. Each were trafficked in the slave trade and would have residents that may have migrated between them over the centuries. While they landed me in different specific countries, each mentioned the super rare subtype which I found intriguing.
I can't say that this information is going to revolutionize how I see myself now but I am interested in learning more about each of the countries and tribes mentioned in my profiles. I'll probably add each to my future travel list to see what I can discover about who I am when I'm a new situation. There are some countries that have started to recognize this as tourism boost and are working with your tribal ancestors to meet and interact with you while you are in country. Definitely on my wish list if I can make the trip. I'd like to see what overlap there is with my father's side eventually as well since everything I have right now is just from my maternal line. My paternal side may be a more interesting mix as everyone has always said they were not sure what her background was precisely but they were positive my paternal great grandmother was not Black. The standing belief was that she was Native American but no one can confirm that--well until the test comes back I guess. Either way I have another way to spend my time this summer. Learning about the people and places in Africa my mother's family originated from.
I was excited initially about Ancestry.com being able to tell me more about who I am. Except I read their TOS and a few other things and went well that's just creepy so no. Same thing with 23 and Me and a few others. Plus the Golden State Killer was ultimately traced through companies that don't let you protect your DNA from public search or who don't agree to destroy it. I haven't taken anyone out but the other companies expressly said they would comply with a subpoena regarding DNA so that was a non starter for me in my watching too much ID Network mind. I've said as recently as six months ago I just would have to skip it until I stumbled upon National Geographic's Helix testing option and African Ancestry's very blatant statement that they did almost nothing the same way as Ancestry.com did. I looked into both for at least three months before I bit the bullet and bought each test (thankful for a sale at African Ancestry) for myself and my brother. You may wonder why my brother too well because my DNA can't give me dad's information so I need a close male relative--hi brother--in order to get the information for my whole background. I was clearly more excited than he was because I did mine immediately. I'm just writing this post because the African Ancestry test took about a month longer to come in.
NatGeo took about four weeks to process and tell me that well basically I'm super chocolate. My profile is nearly 90 percent West African with a dash of Eastern European, Central and South African to round it out. The profile most closely aligns to the Yoruba people in Nigeria with a second place profile matching people from Senegal. I also have an apparently rare subtype present in the profile that migrated from Africa due to the slave trade. AfAncestry took about two months to process and said that my profile most closely resembled the Mende people of Sierra Leone. No other sub types or possible options which wasn't totally surprising based on how they tend to work up their profiles. I've seen very few people with more than one group. But clearly Sierra Leone is not Nigeria or Senegal but I can't claim to be well versed in African country location so after pulling up a map the two tests combined just reaffirmed the super chocolate status. The countries are located along the same band of Western Africa. Each were trafficked in the slave trade and would have residents that may have migrated between them over the centuries. While they landed me in different specific countries, each mentioned the super rare subtype which I found intriguing.
I can't say that this information is going to revolutionize how I see myself now but I am interested in learning more about each of the countries and tribes mentioned in my profiles. I'll probably add each to my future travel list to see what I can discover about who I am when I'm a new situation. There are some countries that have started to recognize this as tourism boost and are working with your tribal ancestors to meet and interact with you while you are in country. Definitely on my wish list if I can make the trip. I'd like to see what overlap there is with my father's side eventually as well since everything I have right now is just from my maternal line. My paternal side may be a more interesting mix as everyone has always said they were not sure what her background was precisely but they were positive my paternal great grandmother was not Black. The standing belief was that she was Native American but no one can confirm that--well until the test comes back I guess. Either way I have another way to spend my time this summer. Learning about the people and places in Africa my mother's family originated from.
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