"Finding Your Roots" on PBS

[Kind of Blue]

38. Thanks for this very interesting OP and videos.

I'm looking forward to viewing all of them!

I was born in Nigeria and emigrated here when I was a kid. I was fascinated while growing up about the mixture of particularly AAs and how many prominent families came about, and how some were proud of the mix of white and others defiantly kept their families as black as possible, as well as who was acceptable and not acceptable in each group based on ancestry. The reasons got too much to handle because I was just an African and it became too confusing and didn't mean that much to me, until the stories of slavery and colonialism.

One of my ancestors was stolen when he was about 9. My great-great-great-etcetera grandmother went insane and never recovered from the loss. His story is passed on so we never forget the one we lost. I hope he survived the trip to somewhere in the colonies and produced many kids no matter how much suffering they endured. I hope beyond hope that one day DNA will reunite our family. It could happen

Then came stories while growing up of my family's migration from the Middle East, on my dad's side, and a disease in the family called Moren's ulcer that proved that at one time we were people of the Sahara, on my mom's side. So the movement to sub-Sahara Africa is plausible, my grandmothers are distant cousins as well as the immediate family being Muslim at one point living in northern Nigeria. Then another story of the Chinaman ancestor but I believe thru some research that he might have been Filipino. Then before my dad died last month, I found out that we were in Kenya.

So many stories of migration that are hundreds or perhaps thousands of years old, all remembered by grios in the family. Before I thought I didn't need DNA to find more about who I am but it would be incredible to find out where we've been since time immemorial.