I've always been fascinated about my family's history and lineage, so when I discovered Ancestry.com DNA tests, I was all over it. I purchased my ancestry DNA kit around Thanksgiving, during the Black Friday sales for the low price of $79 (ori. $99). Who could pass up those savings?

Image courtesy Latinaish.com

Within two weeks, my new kit arrived and I was eager to hop to it. I'll spare you the gross pictures of the process but I'll give you an idea of what you do. Borrowing this picture from another blog, you kit arrives with the following contents:

• A prepaid return mailing box
• An instruction booklet
• A collection tube
• A ziploc bag for your sample

You basically put the tube together and collect saliva samples (aka spit without the bubbles) into the tube until you reach the line. You seal the tube and place into the ziploc bag and mail off. Bam! That's it! About 6 weeks later, you get your results.

Ancestry.com does a really good job of keeping you posted on the progress of the sample analysis, which I thought was pretty good. After 6 weeks of waiting, I finally got my results just before Christmas and couldn't wait to find out "what I was made of".


As you can see, I'm 92% African (duh), but interestingly enough, I'm 58% Benin/Togo | Cameroon/Congo. I found this interesting because it is believed that my father's side is mostly West African and my mother's is more middle/east African. I was also shocked to the Ivory Coast and Ghana on there as well. Naturally my Asian roots are low but my European is holding steady at 7% LOL

Ancestry also provides you with the neat little summary of everything, as far as showing up on a map where you may have descendent from.


I discovered tonight that site also shows you which areas in the US your family probably originated from as well. How cool!

This was a really fun experience and I've enjoyed learning more about my family history as a result. I highly recommend doing this, if only for curiosity. You never know what you may uncover...