There is a lot of skepticism surrounding the emergence of ancestral testing. When I chat with others about ancestry testing, people often bring up their concerns about handing over their genetic information. Understandably, people want to know whether the tests are accurate, how their genetic information will be stored or used, and which company’s test is most worth the money.

My sister and I both took ancestry tests offered by two different companies and although these tests did offer some useful information, we were a bit disappointed. My sister’s results only said that she is “West African” (thanks, we’d deduced that already!) and while my results were slightly more specific, the largest portion of my African results were clumped together into a mass grouping that could place me in any one of over 500 different African tribes! I don’t want to hear that I’m of West African descent or that I’m part of a group that may be located in any or all of over 10 nations. When it comes to African heritage, what matters most is specific tribal affiliation within a geographic region on the African continent.

I guess my dad was thinking the same thing when he took the African Ancestry test. This test is designed to inform you of your paternal or maternal tribal affiliations going back 2000 years. I was excited to hear his paternal results – the Fang and Benga tribes that currently live in the nation of Gabon. Immediately, I started doing my research. And I want to share three quick stories.

I’m from the DC area and during a visit home, I went to visit the Gabonese embassy. I learned a bit about the history, geography, and culture of Gabon. I saw Fang masks – which the Fang are famous for making – and even got to eat some Gabonese food. While there, a woman asked me why I was interested in Gabon and I informed her that I’d recently learned that I descend from the Fang and Benga tribes. Someone across the room – whom I’d noticed eyeing me earlier on – immediately exclaimed, “I told you she looked like one of us!” The women piled even more food on my plate, took my picture, and gave me their contact information. It was nice to imagine that the ancestors of these women and my own ancestors could have known each other, laughed together, worked together, and raised children together.

My father and his side of the family have always loved the ocean – a trait I’ve inherited. My mom tells a story of me as a toddler, scaring her to death as I ran into the ocean full of joy and completely unafraid. My mom is not a beach person, and I assume that’s why we didn’t go to the beach often growing up. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I rediscovered the ocean and heard my mother’s story of my beach baby shenanigans. I can’t speak for my family members, but for me the love of the ocean is a deep rooted love that I will never be able to explain. I connect with water in general and with the ocean in particular. It sounds ridiculous but I feel as if the ocean understands me. This is why I was obsessed with the movie Moana! The casual beach visit feels like an immense spiritual experience. Even looking at pictures of water resonates with and moves me. Don’t ask me to explain it, I really can’t.

Imagine my surprise when I read that the Benga tribe – the other tribe from whom I descend – was part of a group of coastal tribes called “playeros” (beach people) by their colonizers. Apparently, being a beach bum is written into my genetic code.

As a child, I sometimes saw Samuel L. Jackson on commercials or in trailers for movies and would always think to myself how much he looked like the men in my father’s side of the family. There was a familiarity about him that I couldn’t place. I figured that if we were related to him, someone would have told me. So I shrugged it off as an uncanny resemblance and dropped the issue. Still, whenever I saw him on television the familiar feelings returned. As it turns out – he is also from the Benga tribe.

I was probably too young to watch most of the work Samuel L Jackson did in his prime years and as a result I couldn’t consider myself one of his fans – but after discovering that we are from the same tribe, I followed him on Instagram.

Currently he is working on a documentary that has taken him to different nations in Africa. On his feed, I saw that the Gabonese had a welcoming ceremony for him, welcoming him out of diaspora and back into his ancestral home – and he even got to meet the current chief of the Benga tribe! This meant that I got to see a picture on Instagram of the man who leads the Benga tribe today.

Wandering into the Gabonese embassy and being recognized as Fang, learning that my love for the ocean may have ancestral origins, being able to follow a celebrity who is discovering one of the same tribes as I am – none of it seems like much but for me it’s amazing. The icing on the cake was last weekend when I found a Benga language book written in the 1850s by missionaries to Gabon. I’m sure the language has evolved since the 1850s, but as a closet linguist the ability to teach myself a bit of the Benga language would be so much fun.

If I can be super honest, the one thing that has been a constant hardship for me has been the inability to know my ancestors and their stories. The inability to know my ethnic background has formed so much of who I am. I have even made certain life decisions – at least in part – as a result of needing to feel connected to a specific ancestral background. I don’t know if this need has affected other Black POC the way it has affected me, but I assume so otherwise these ancestry tests would not be taking off the way they are in the Black community. While I can understand the skepticism surrounding ancestry testing, at this point for me the reward is greater than the risk. I’m extremely grateful to be living in a time where I can learn something of what my family might have been before slavery stole our heritage.

And I can’t wait to test my mother’s lineage and see what shows up, there!