In my life time, another unfortunate result of colonization I have witnessed, is the unconscious disconnect from self-identity it has caused my people. In my opinion, the most important factor that contributes to an individual’s self-identity, is their ancestry! Your ancestry is your family history, a record of where your ancestors originated from, tracing their descendants down to your immediate parents.

What thoughts come to mind when you think of your ancestors? Does that train of thought ever cross your mind? Do you think it is important to know about your ancestors or do you believe this is a form of backwardness? I would admit, for many years of my life, I remained very ignorant about my ancestors, and the significance of knowing about them, caring about them and honoring them. Our school curriculums did not encourage us to value our national history before colonization, and the religions imposed on us programmed us to look at our own cultures, customs and spiritual practices as backward, demonic and evil. Even our Nollywood movies teach us to equate our culture with voodoo and evil, and never good virtues and character. Good character and virtue are usually attributed to the village pastor while evil and malice are attributed to the village native doctor. Since history is always written by the victors, we have never received accurate accounts of who our ancestors really were, the struggles they faced and the battles they won and lost.

The image of ancestors that was painted for many Nigerians, is an image of weakness, backwardness, barbarity, evil and divisiveness. We are told stories that you do not want to be associated with and that you cannot be inspired by! We are not told stories of triumphant and victorious warriors, of men and woman of the highest virtue, of innovators and creators. But there is no society that can thrive for thousands of years without such men and woman! Growing up as a Nigerian and a catholic, you spend most of your life learning about the greatness and holiness of foreigners. You learn about the lives of a plethora of saints, explorers, scientists, philosophers and inventors, predominantly from Europe. And one can’t help but ask, what were my ancestors doing? It is until you begin to go deeper into your search for knowledge about yourself and your culture that you realize that a lot of the true information has been suppressed or falsified. You will realize that it was always the colonial plan to limit your knowledge about your culture, your history and yourself, in order to control you and manipulate your resources.

A man who does not respect his own ancestry, will not respect his own identity and a man who does not respect his own identity, will not respect his own ideas and a man who does not respect his own ideas, will not invent or create- Kome Nelson Agose

By the time I was born, the only grandparent still alive, was my grandmother on my mum’s side. I had a decent relationship with her even though she lived in a different state and we didn’t see often. I am grateful I was able to witness her alive, interact with her and eat her cooking. I only wish I had the chance to ask her many more questions about my family history before she passed away last year on May 18^th, 2022. It wasn’t until her passing and my 1^st hand experience of her burial ceremony, that it finally clicked in my head why it was so important to honor our ancestors and to keep their memories alive. Ancestors are not random spirits in the sky, these are your actual parents and their genes (life force and data) are also within you. Without these people you would not be here to experience the abundance of life that the creator has in store for you. They possess the physical, emotional, mental, sexual, and even financial historical data of the person you are today. Their nutrition, cultures, customs, spirituality, environment, hygiene, and life experiences all contribute to shape your identity and having knowledge of these areas help you to navigate life with less resistance. They also had to go through unimaginable struggles to procreate and to survive through difficult times in order for you to be alive to witness today. Many fought battles, survived famines, oppression, invasions and other horrors in order to live and procreate. They deserve to be respected, revered and honored for the sacrifices they made. They do not deserve the neglect and insults that they suffer from us on a nationwide scale! If you have no access to information about their lives and about who they were, it makes it more difficult to fully understand yourself, your patterns, your strengths, your weaknesses, your resources, your gifts and your predispositions. It is why we lack direction as a nation. We either no longer care about this information or no longer have accurate access to it.

Reflecting on my grandmother’s life, the struggles she had to face as a young girl in a polygamous marriage and as a mother, inspired me to want to learn more about my other grandparents on both sides. I began to ask my parents questions in order to map out my ancestry as far back as I could. I was able to go back about 10 generations on my mother’s side but I could only go as far as 2 generations so far on my father’s side due to the influence of the Catholic faith. Our family connections to the traditions before Christianity were severed and as such, a lot of useful information lost, simply because no one saw the inherent value in it or saw it as evil or backward! I cannot blame them for this because of the level of deception, destruction and fear the colonizers brought into the land and to anyone who opposed their wishes. I was able to find accurate accounts of the origin of my dad’s tribe as well as in-depth information about our cultures, customs and spirituality which gave me massive insight into why we are who we are as people today.

It is important to be able to look at each generation with the standards of judgement from their own particular generation and not with the standards of a future or past one. I am saying this for everyone to note that there has never been a perfect generation anywhere in the world and that truth and innovation are always revealed in more detail in the future, than they were in the past. Therefore, it is important to be able to forgive your ancestors for any ignorance or lack of information they must have had and to trust that they did the best they could with the information they had! This allows you to be able to observe all of their patterns without judgment which would give you a wider perspective for understanding and a deeper appreciation for who they were as people. 

The more you learn about who your ancestors were and their life stories, the more you feel a connection to them. The more connected you feel to them the more you will respect them and desire to keep their memory alive in thought, words and actions! Even the bible commands that Christians should honor their mothers and fathers so that it will be well with them. If this is a natural law, does our neglect, disdain and borderline disrespect of our ancestors attract any retribution to our nation? Our adopted religions have diverted our focus from our ancestors and ancestral lands, to foreign ancestors and ancestral lands. We neglect our own parents while honoring their own! We learn about their names, their lives and achievements. We pray for them, sing songs about them, honor them and build statues for them. This is why we respect and revere foreigners, particularly the Europeans and Arabs, more than we do ourselves and our own ancestors! This is also why we feel little to no connection to each other and to our ancestral lands, and can let whoever come in and take whatever they want from it. It is almost like we have forgotten/lost our place in the world. We trust outsiders more than we trust ourselves, individually and collectively.

Ever since making these discoveries a year ago, I have been praying to God to reveal healthy and true ways to honor my ancestors and align with them. The very first step I was led to was asking my parents and family members questions, finding out their names, when they died, how they lived, what type of spirituality they practiced, and even the cause of their death. I wanted to know both the good and the bad. I was also led to read about both my cultures, my mum is from a royal Benin family, while my dad is Isoko. I began to pray for my ancestors and to speak to them through words of affirmation in my heart. I started to let them know that I forgive them for whatever misdeed they may have committed based on the misinformation they had, I let them know that I love them and I am proud of them and I also let them know that more truth about life has been revealed in my time. Most importantly, I constantly remind them, while calling their actual names, that I am grateful for them sharing the gift of life with me!  Instead of looking up to catholic saints and foreigners who aren’t part of my bloodline, I have been asking my own ancestors to intercede for me, to reveal life patterns and past mistakes to me that I may be repeating, to reveal hidden strengths, skills and talents that I may be unaware of and to keep me aligned with my divine purpose.

Ever since I embarked on this journey, I have been growing exponentially in self-knowledge, knowledge of life, in understanding my gifts, my triggers and my strengths, and in overcoming various limitations I had been facing in life. I have been healing areas of myself by observing the patterns within my ancestry and choosing to respond in a different way in this present life time. I have been doing all of this out of love and faith but It wasn’t until Last Saturday that I received my biggest confirmation with an extraordinary sign!

On Saturday, January 7^th 2023, I went to Tarkwa Bay beach in Lagos, for my first camping trip of the year. I go camping at Tarkwa bay whenever I need a hard reset, need some deep reflection or deep connection with my soul through nature. The silvery sands, the sound of the water crashing on the rocks, the beautiful trees and scenery, provide the perfect environment for one to achieve perfect connection with God and with self. The Lagos city life is noisy and chaotic, constant interaction with it without any deliberate unplug from it quickly leads one to a state of confusion and frustration. Going to the beach is one of the most affordable ways to unplug and to find peace and clarity within Lagos. Camping on the beach is one of the most amazing and deeply fulfilling experiences to have in Lagos, but only true nature lovers and adventurous souls get to experience it. I am usually shocked at how empty the beach is whenever I go camping and on this particular occasion, I had the entire beach front to myself.

I know what you are thinking, is it safe to camp overnight at Tarkwa bay beach? It happens to be one of the safest places in Lagos state, as it an island community of Naval and Military officers. It is secure 24 hours a day and there are also hotels and cabanas available for lodging. I took a banana boat from 6 Walter Carrington Street at about 3PM and it took us 10 minutes to make it to the beach. Once I got to the beach, I spent the evening hiking, swimming in the ocean, stretching, talking with a few friends that I met on the beach and sipping fresh palm wine! It was the perfect way to cool off from the Christmas and New year’s madness in the city. By sun set, the beach began to empty out as most of the regular visitors started heading back to land.

Around 1am in the morning I was praying and honoring my ancestors on the beach in front of the ocean, about 2 meters from where my tent was. It was a full moon and the Orion’s belt constellation was very visible. I called out my ancestors by their names, thanked them for their life’s effort and sacrifices, for all the ways they guide me and fight for me that I am unaware of and reminded them that I am proud to be their descendant. After saying my prayers, I was spinning around in a circle (really out of childish excitement) and pouring the water I had in my hand on the sand and the water made a circle on the ground. Anyone who goes to the beach knows that prints in the sand get covered either by the wind, the water or by other people’s footsteps. At sun rise I woke up to go for a swim in the ocean and to do some more exercises. When I was done stretching other people had started showing up to the beach, including a few other people I know who stopped by to swim in the ocean with me. At this point, I forgot I had made a water circle on the ground after praying for my ancestors specifically, earlier that morning.

On my way back to where my tent was, a friend who had joined me to swim, noticed the shape of a perfect heart on the sand 2 meters away from my tent. She goes “I wonder who drew a heart on the ground” and when I looked, I realized it had been the exact same spot I was standing and honoring my ancestors the night before. Not only did the wind not cover up the water circle splash on the floor, but what was clearly a circle the night before, had become the shape of a heart in the morning almost 9 hours later. I took this as a sign of appreciation from my ancestors and motivation to continue to love and honor their memory!

Nobody cares about the success of your life more than your own bloodline, your own race, your own family, your own parents and your own ancestors. Yes, the human flesh and mind can be corrupted by deception while on earth and each generation is born into a set of lies. But I believe that when we transition back to the world of the spirit, we realign with perfect truth and love. The only way to move forward as an individual or a race is to learn from the past, in order to avoid repeating negative patterns and we can only learn from the past by observing it objectively!  We must be open to learning and removing any fear associated with connecting with our ancestry. Honoring and respecting your ancestors gives more meaning to your life, and it inspires future generations of men and woman to make better contributions within their life time. It gives one a strong sense of belonging and identity knowing all the sacrifices that have been made, for he or she to be here living free and breathing air today.

You must fully honor your ancestors in order to fully honor yourself. Whatever you judge in your ancestors you judge in yourself, because it is from them you get all your genes from. You must fully understand your ancestors in order to understand yourself. The essence and life force of all your ancestors, since the beginning, exists within you. Aligning with this energy gives one access to information from various times and different ages. It is also important to honor our first, ancestor, the mother of all life, THE EARTH! By contemplating her beauty, watering her plants, respecting all life and living according to your purpose in love!

I encourage you to learn more about your ancestry today and to begin to honor their memories more in whatever way that is revealed to you. It will bring extraordinary new insights and opportunities into your life. And do not forget your first ancestor…mother earth!

One love

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