Hearing Voices

I was recently reading a magazine article in National Geographic Traveler about this new project they have started to track DNA throughout time, following the movements of people and different ethnic groups around the globe. People like you and I can send in something like $100 with a DNA sample and within a few weeks they will send you back a very detailed list of your more ancient ancestors, where they were from and from which world groups you are a part of. This doesn’t mean they are going to tell you where your great great great grandpa lived and came from, it is more like telling you that you are a descendent of people from Egypt or ancient Rome. We aren’t talking 200 years or historical background more like 20,000 years of background. One of the first people to have this done was writing an article about his findings about his own background. He talked about how his descendants came from England in the 1600’s and how his grandparents passed down stories and documents to prove it. With a quick swab of his inner cheek (for the DNA) he was able to get a bigger perspective of his past. From Tanzania to Lebanon and Uzbekistan to Spain and finally England, his past involved a lot more than just jolly old England.
Throughout the article he tells us how he visited each of these groups now, wanting to see something of his past, meet the people that might be his relatives and discover a bit more about himself in the process. The one thing that he found, if nothing else, is that even in today’s world, a society brimming with modernization, Wal-Mart’s, fast paced societies, there are people in different parts of that world that still hold a connection to each other—a connection that has lasted thousands of years. The Hadzabe tribe in Tanzania welcomed him with open arms, as if he was one of their own villagers that had been away on a long trip. The chief of the tribe welcomed him home. At one instance while in Tanzania, the chief told him “We are all descendants of this tree”, referring to the large baobab tree that women for thousands of years have given birth under—somehow connecting him to that place, that tree, that experience, those people. Through this one mans account of his trip to far off lands, he has connected with me. It isn’t often that I find a magazine article that happens to say many of the things I have been contemplating. In my last passage I was talking about finding a piece of me in each place that I go, and I found this article, these words to connect with that beautifully. In each place, Mr. Webster was able to find a pieces of himself—many of them sitting and waiting for maybe thousands of years to be found. He found them though and with those pieces, he is able to start putting himself back together. It all makes me wonder where my ancient ancestors came from—what they contemporaries do, think, worship and feel. Where they live and how the world is affecting them. I wonder where in the world I would be taken with the same such journey—possibly some of the places I’ve already been, probably many new ones.
It was a good feeling to know that someone else was on the same sort of life journey that I feel like I’m on—a journey that I think, in a way, I’ve been beaconed to by the forces that be; God if you like. A light is flashing in front of me, guiding my movements, wayward as they might become, it always brings me back on course.