Easter Sunday

Schooling in the office

Instead of attending any Easter festivities (i.e. church or Bunny & eggs), I'm taking the time today to work diligently on my research paper for my English Composition class. I spent the entire day yesterday with Dayna and Hudson, so I don't feel bad about missing it. Dayna and Hudson drove down to Missouri City to attend service at Mr & Mrs Smith's church. Afterwards, I believe, they're going to have a big lunch at their house. (I'm told they'll be reserving a plate for me and sending it with Dayna.)

Grammy purchased a very handsome baby-blue outfit last week for Hudson to wear this morning. I got up early with them and put it on him while Dayna was getting ready. I brushed his teeth and tried to make some order out of the bedhead he was sporting. Dayna came later with a wet brush and parted his hair. "I see, so dorky is okay for Easter Sunday," I said. Dayna usually complains when I part his hair after bathtime.

Motherland

After they had left I sat down to check out the news while I drank some coffee. Searching through the DirectTV guide I flipped over to a documentary on the LinkTV channel. A documentary was starting called Motherland about a group of black people from Britain selected to trace their origins (presumably Afrikan) through DNA sequence testing. This has been an interest to me for a while and is something in which I wanted to participate (see The Genographic Project). Ancestral origins are a hobby of mine; I currently spend a lot of time researching my family history on Ancestry.com.

On the documentary, results of one man's testing showed that his paternal lineage had in fact originated in Europe, not in Africa as he had expected. However, later testing of the same data found that his mitocondrial (maternal) DNA did trace back to the Karuni tribe in southern Niger.

The results of one of the women's testing linked her more accurately and directly to a tribe living on the island of Bioko, just off the coast of Camaroon. In fact, testing of many of the families there led her to a woman whose DNA sequence were nearly the same, identifying her as a direct relative. The woman visited the island and met up with the village people among whom her family lived. The village people pronounced her "lost daughter" of the tribe, and even gave her a piece of land there as part of her rite.

It was amazing to see this kind of reunion of blood lines that is capable through this kind of science. I believe that the near future holds amazing possibilites as this kind of research continues and improves. I would imagine that tracing ancestral lineage through DNA will become common practice for everyone in the coming years.