We are all travellers
Thami Kwazi
Afew months ago, a Heritage DNA kit landed on my desk, courtesy the Tullamore Dew’s My Heritage DNA Beauty of Blend campaign.
I’ve always been aware that I’m Xhosa, with a Swazi mother and Tswana (and part Khoisan) grandmother. Yes, all very confusing, so the curiosity to find out more got me taking the test. The test kit was pretty easy – you take swabs from your inner cheeks and mix them with the supplied liquid, then send them off to Texas.
The results were more than I expected, and now that it’s heritage month, it’s the perfect opportunity for me to find out about my roots. And then to add more travel trips to my bucket list of places to see in my lifetime.
Heritage month is the perfect month to find out your genealogy and investigate it; the advantage is if you’re mostly African, you can start planning a trip to all the places where your ancestors planted roots.
Aside from being the obvious South African, a large part of my geneaology is Kenyan. In fact, 40%. Then I have roots in central Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
Then it gets extremely strange. I am about 25% Asian. I had to phone my father and ask him about this. Growing up he was always asked if he was American simply because of his fine hair texture.
Hair texture is a thing with black people ... it sounds ridiculous but even the apartheid government introduced the pencil test to categorise us.
Of the Asian genealogy running in my veins are the following: Afghanistan, Iran and, most prominently, Nepal.
What would an African girl be doing with genes from Nepal? Were some of my ancestors sherpas who got to explore the peaks of Everest? I’m still attempting to understand the cauldron of cultures running though my veins, but this could be due to that fact that humans in essence are nomads. The people of Nepal are travellers who have climbed one of the world’s greatest peaks, so why wouldn’t they move past their borders into other countries? People from Iran and Afghanistan were the original Persians, some of whom also moved into many of the African nations, such as Egypt and Morocco. East Africa is mostly occupied by people of Islamic religion, which would make sense when it comes to Persians and people from Arabic nations moving into that area. This is just a guess. The test, once taken, also allows you to join a community where it matches you up digitally with relatives from your lineage. Don’t be surprised if some of them are in other continents or of another race. This gives you the opportunity to email them. My closest living relatives outside of Nepal and Egypt are in the United States and Sweden ... again, this makes absolutely no sense. I don’t foresee that Afghanistan will ever be an ideal destination for any sort of trip, even if it is to find my oldest living relatives. Egypt is rather more attractive and Kenya is the first on my bucket list. This experience has being empowering in understanding that the human existence as it is has always been one of travellers. Our genes are a display that no matter how pure we may believe we are, until we dig deeper are all tourists in the world. How to take the test? Log onto the website and buy the kit. It will be sent to you and within a few weeks you’ll have a better understanding of who you are.