In 2019, Paste BN took me to Angola. Last year, I went back 'home' with my family
I woke early on a Thursday morning in December in Malanje, Angola, to the sound of a rooster crowing.
People were already going about their day in this agricultural province where the chickens and goats roamed free. Here, buildings and traditional homes sprawled out into the countryside and the sky seemed to open up before me.
It was so different from Luanda, the country’s bustling urban capital, where morning brought the sights and sounds of the many businesses opening, children going to school in their uniforms, and women in the street selling merchandise and fresh produce balanced on their heads.
And so different from my first visit in August 2019, when Paste BN journalists documented my journey to Angola, the homeland of my ancestors.
Through oral history and supporting documentation, our Tucker family believes we are descendants of William, the first Black child born and baptized in the English colonies nearly 400 years ago. William was born to Antoney and Isabella, two of the “20 and odd Negroes” brought to Point Comfort, now Hampton, Virginia, in August 1619. Antoney and Isabella were citizens of the Ndongo Kingdom and the residents of Malanje today descend from the people of that kingdom.
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Knowing the origin of my enslaved ancestors gives me a historical context that many African Americans cannot yet embrace. Stepping onto this African soil has given me a new sense of identity, Angolan American, of which I am very proud.
The Tucker family narrative was primarily a local one that was of interest only to a very few until Paste BN published its 1619 project for the 400th anniversary of the landing of the First Africans in the Virginia colony. Since then, we have had many encounters with organizations and the Embassy of Angola. This time I was touring Angola with my brother, Vincent A. Tucker, and first cousin, Carolita Jones Cope, at the invitation of President João Lourenço.
As we traveled one hour on the president’s jet to Malanje, I reflected on how far my family had come. In 2019, the Paste BN team and I traveled approximately 8 hours from Luanda to Malanje from late afternoon through the night in an old, converted school bus. As we left the long lines of Angolans in Luanda waiting for buses, and the crowds of people in the city, we saw the openness of the terrain ahead of us.
We rode along very bumpy roads through the savanna, through towns called N'dalatando, Matete and Lombe. When night fell, we saw fires in the distant communities that provided light for the evening, as our driver dodged huge craters in the road and our fixer eased our way past wary guards at checkpoints. I recalled seeing an apparition of a man standing in the aisle of the bus as we rode, dozing, through an area known anciently for witchcraft. One of the journalists saw him too. We were not afraid.
In December, we were welcomed in Luanda and Malanje with warmth and enthusiasm. I saw friends and familiar faces from my 2019 visit. My brother, cousin and I met with Angolan officials, sobas (village leaders), curators, and a United Methodist pastor. This time I was not a stranger in the land of my ancestors.
Many folks were concerned about our travels to Angola during the outbreak of the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in southern African countries. We were reassured by the protocols in place. We also witnessed nursing students at Agostinho Neto University in Luanda vaccinating community members.
The historical and cultural tours reminded us that Angola is a relatively new country. After more than 400 years of Portuguese occupation, they gained their independence in 1975. Then there were 27 years of civil war. Lourenço is just the third president Angola has had. I looked for progress with the rebuilding of the infrastructure destroyed in the war, which was most evident in Malanje as we traveled through the rural communities.
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In Cangandala, a town in Malanje, we took a picture with the children. Vincent, who owns a moving business in Chesterfield, Virginia, saw hope in their faces as they waved, smiled, and posed. “My first visit to the motherland is changing my mindset from what I have been taught over the 59 years of my life,” he said. “It gave me strength to continue working hard in my business and social enterprise to educate and share with other Black businesses my experiences in Angola.
“I saw men, women and children working the rich agriculture landscapes to take care of their families and community. I was reminded that we exist because our ancestors survived, because they sacrificed, and we strive because they dreamed,” he said.
We did not visit the Fortaleza de Massangano, where in 2019 I walked in the path of our ancestors held there before they were shipped via canoes down the Kwanza River to be put on slave ships in Luanda. This time, we went to the river near Cangandala, many miles east of Massangano, where enslaved Angolans were taken directly to the boats.
“It was a deeply emotional moment to stop at the edge of the shore of the River Kwanza and take in the beauty of the lush green terrain on both shores and a waterfall to my left,” my cousin Carolita said. “I felt the need to take off my shoes and feel the soil on my feet as I imagined what my ancestors and others may have experienced.”
We gathered soil from the river in plastic bags that seemed too ordinary for the significance of their contents.
War-torn Angola certainly wasn’t on my radar of African countries to tour before the 1619 anniversary. Now, it holds a passion in the hearts of myself, my brother and my cousin. We want to reclaim our ancestral home and learn more about its culture and history. We may never identify our kinfolk in Angola, but we can still hold out hope that they exist.
In 2019, a soba in Kalandula village told me that Angola is our home. We have relatives there. They didn’t forget us, we forgot about them.
Now, our family is home again.