The ARK Jammers' Ancestry Reconnection Program in Cameroon

(December 29, 2010 – January 4, 2010) The ARK Jammers will be launching a public awareness initiative in Cameroon in December 2010 that will seek to introduce a new spirit of commitment to country by Cameroonians.The campaign is designed to initiate and build momentum toward greater citizen service in Cameroon today. To do this, it will engage well-known voices in entertainment, the media, the business sector, philanthropy etc., to reach Cameroonians of all ages and backgrounds.

One of the campaign's components is the Ancestry Reconnection Program (ARP) for invited African Americans who have traced their DNA to Cameroon. With the support of the American DNA company African Ancestry and jointly with local authorities, the ARK Jammers will host an unforgettable set of programs and events including tours and ceremonies showcasing the geographical, ethnic, historical, and cultural diversity of the country that their ancestors came from.

The ARP will include: - A Welcome Home Ceremony held under the auspices of the head of government
- Receptions, historical site visits, and traditional ceremonies
- Attendance at the ARK Jammers campaign kickoff concert as special guests
- An unforgettable five-day stay in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon
- A fantastic two-day stay in Kribi, home of one of Cameroon's gorgeous beaches
- Formal request for a national identity card for all African Ancestry DNA descendants of Cameroon.

Though burdened by its fair share of turmoil and strife, Cameroon, also known as «Africa in miniature», is by far one of the most interesting places on earth. With more than 250 ethnic groups in a surface area less than the size of California, you will see why visiting Cameroon is unique. Each ethnic group has its culture: tribal language, food, music, birth, engagement, wedding and funeral customs. This gives Cameroon an endless array of cultural variety. When you get there, forget your heavy winter clothes. Weather conditions are spring-like and summer-flavored all year round. You will enjoy Cameroon's warm hospitality; Cameroon's varied and tasty gastronomy; Cameroon's music, complex and syncopated. Watching the ARK Jammers perform, you will know why people in the music industry, including American bass superstar Stanley Clark consider Cameroonian bass players the best in the world!

This should be a rediscovery of a homeland that is rich and diverse, happy and full of surprises; or it may be your first view of Cameroon beyond what has remained a very distorted picture shaped by uninformed news reports. But after the ARK Jammers take you to the land of your ancestor, a piece of your soul will stay there, and you will never be the same again! This program will be held from December 29, 2010 – January 4, 2011. The travel agency for this trip will arrange for you to get the least expensive airfare possible. Once in Cameroon, the ARK Jammers will fully take care of your stay, covering the cost of your hotel, meals, transportation, and tours.

Ancestry Reconnection

More details will be forthcoming soon. For more information, please contact: Eric Chinje at: cell: (202) 683 01 52 email: echinje@gmail.com
Gina Paige at: tel: (202) 723 09 00 email: Cameroon2010@africanancestry.com

Let the ARK Jammers take you home!

The Ancestry Reconnection Program

Thousands of African Americans are searching for their ethnic roots, using their DNA to guide them to the place of their ancestors. For most of them, the excitement of discovery and the connection to Africa has stayed in the vicinity of the laboratory or within their own homes. The process need not end there.

The ARK Jammers Ancestry Reconnection Program is an effort to make the connection real; bring the long wandering child of the Diaspora back to his or her people. Starting where lab work by DNA analysts ends, the program begins with a Ceremony of Welcome and Recognition at the Embassy of the country of origin. During that ceremony, an attestation of reconnection is handed over to the recipient by the Ambassador or his representative, as a testimonial of his/her new status.

Participants, accompanied by family and friends, are introduced to their new "family", to the cultural, social and political symbols that define their second home, and to the history, art and literature of an ancestry they should be proud of. Over time, a trip to the motherland is arranged, to go full circle and bring the sojourner to the logical end of their journey.

About the ARK Jammers Connection, Inc.

The ARK Jammers Connection is a mission-driven organization gathering artists and music lovers from different cultures and from all walks of life, who are dedicated to spreading kindness and promoting intercultural dialogue through the unifying power of music. We see kindness and intercultural dialogue as the most powerful keys to love, respect, mutual understanding among people, and peace among nations.

Human suffering is global and present in every society. To help alleviate that suffering, the ARK Jammers want to be the best version of themselves. We want to be a force of good and charity. We want to change people's minds and hearts. We want to help change the way people treat each other, from indifference to concern, from inaction to action, from selfishness to service, compassion and love. For more information, please visit: www.arkjammers.org

www.cameroononline.org

Retracing Ancestry after Slave Trade: Over 6,000 Americans of Cameroonian origin Discovered

(Christopher JATOR, Cameroon Tribune - Mercredi, 29 Décembre 2010 00:28)

The Co-Founder of the American DNA Company, who uncovered the Cameroonian Americans, is part of the delegation visiting Cameroon.

The President and Co-Founder of African Ancestry, an American DNA company, Gina Paige, has revealed that between 6,000 and 8,000 Cameroonian Americans have been uncovered, thanks to DNA technology. This number is just a few of the many Americans of Cameroonian ancestry living in the United States of America.

'There are possibilities that there are as many Cameroonians in Americas as in Cameroon today,' said US-based Cameroonian Eric Chinje, Board Member of ARK Jammers Connection. 'Think of what will happen if we make that connection between the two sides. This is what is behind the Ancestry Reconnection Programme fostered by ARK Jammers Connection,' he added.

Gina Paige explained that the DNA technology, which is highly credible and through which the Cameroonian Americans were identified, involves using cheek cells then looking at the DNA that is maternally or paternally inherited. 'We compare it to the over 25,000 indigenous African lineages or DNA. If matching with a specific lineage, we conclude the person is from that ancestry,' she went on. The scientist, who was speaking at a traditional reception by Sawa Chiefs at the Dika Akwa Palace in Douala yesterday, traced her ancestry to Nigeria, adding that her mother was Fulani and Father Hausa. She said she finds interest in the discovery because it is important known one's roots.

The 50 Afro-Americans, who are in Cameroon since Monday, were yesterday blessed by traditional Sawa Chiefs at the Dika Akwa Palace in Akwa Douala. During the reception ceremony, heavily attended by other traditional Sawa notables and the media, the approx. 40 Cameroonian Americans and ten other Afro-Americans were each given a pair of Sandals which constitute a part of the cultural Sawa dressing, the 'kaba ngondo'. The symbolic gesture was made shortly after a session of incantations symbolizing the blessings, according to the Sawa people.

ARK Jammers Connection, an organization that saw the light of day in Baltimore, USA, in June 2008, is the brain-behind the initiative. With the support of the American DNA Company which has identified many Cameroonian Americans after the slave trade period, ARK Jammers Connection brought together the African Americans into visiting Cameroon. The guests will be in the country until January 5, 2011, visiting other areas of the country.

One of the Cameroonian American, Regina Jackson, said she is proud being in her country of ancestry, Cameroon. 'It's not enough to be in Africa but to have found my home. Most importantly is the exchanges our country's children will make with American children, as pen pals,' she noted joyously. Avline Ava, President of ARK Jammers Connection, said an ARK Jammers branch will be set up in Cameroon in 2011 with the goal of promoting exchanges between African Americans in the USA and Cameroonians in at home. The guests and ARK Jammers officials later visited Bimbia in the South West Region, where other cultural heritages were gleaned for.

Completing the loop on the Slave journey to the Americas

(www.theghanaianjournal.com).

A Group of African Americans Head back As Free Men and Women to the Land of their Ancestors.\nIn late December, Cameroon will be the first African nation to host a DNA-certified group of African American returnees to the country of their origin. Some 50 African Americans from the United States will travel to the Central African country for a 10-day visit following DNA certification of their ancestral origins. Their ancestors were found to have come from different ethnic groups, including the Tikar, Bamileke and Masa, in the Central African country.

The journey is hosted by the Baltimore, Maryland-based not-for-profit ARK Jammers Connection, which is working with the government of Cameroon to organize the first Ancestry Reconnection Program (ARP).

This trip represents, for those who have decided to make it, a major personal and collective triumph, and a completion, under more auspicious circumstances, of an important historical loop, said Ms Avline Ava, President of the ARK Jammers Connection, Inc. These men and women will remind the world of a journey that started over four centuries ago with their ancestors traveling to the New World in chains and through dangerous seas. They are preparing to go back home as free men and women, in planes and through open and friendly skies, completing that journey, Ava added. It is emerging from DNA test results that the part of the African continent that became the nation of Cameroon played a significant role during the slave trade, both as a source and a point of exit for enslaved Africans from the region. Present-day Cameroon is one of the countries that we find ancestry results from most often, along with Nigeria and Sierra Leone. said Gina Paige, President of the Washington-based African Ancestry, Inc (www.africanancestry.com), which provided the tests for the program. The travelling party will include men and women of all ages and backgrounds who seek a historical and spiritual reconnection to their forebears. I have photographs of my slave ancestors who came from Cameroon, said a member of the group, and I will be bringing those with me.

Dr. Lisa Aubrey, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and Political Science, with a small team of student researchers, at Arizona State University, have come up with interesting new information on the role Cameroon played in the slave trade. We are finding out, for example, the names and origins of ships, dates, and the number of Africans that were captured and transported during one of the periods under study, Dr. Aubrey said.

The Cameroonian-Americans will be exposed to the culture and traditions of their ethnic communities of origin and have a chance to sample the great diversity in language, geography and religion that earned for Cameroon the name, Africa in Miniature . Scheduled to arrive on December 27 in Douala, Cameroon s economic capital, the group will leave for the US on January 5, 2011.A mega concert involving the biggest names in Cameroonian music – Manu Dibango, Yannick Noah, Ekambi Brilliant, Noel Ekwabi, etc. – will crown the cultural events planned to mark the homecoming event.

The trip to Cameroon, ARJ Jammers President Ava said, is the first in a series of Ancestry Reconnection Programs through which Cameroon hopes to establish longer term relations with Cameroonian-Americans.

DNA-certified group of African Americans to visit Cameroon

(JK/ad/APA - December 17th, 2010).

APA-Nairobi (Kenya) Cameroon will be the first African nation on 27 December to host a DNA-certified group of African American returnees to the country of their origin, APA learns in a statement issued by Maryland-based not-for-profit ARK Jammers Connection in Nairobi on Friday.

Some 50 African Americans from the United States will travel to the central African country for a 10-day visit following DNA certification of their ancestral origins.

Their ancestors were found to have come from different ethnic groups, including the Tikar, Bamileke and Masa, in the central African country.

The journey is hosted by Baltimore, Maryland-based ARK which is working with the government of Cameroon to organize the first Ancestry Reconnection Programme (ARP).

'This trip represents, for those who have decided to make it, a major personal and collective triumph, and a completion, under more auspicious circumstances, of an important historical loop,' said Ms Avline Ava, President of the ARK Jammers Connection, Inc.

It is emerging from DNA test results that the part of the African continent that became the nation of Cameroon played a significant role during the slave trade, both as a source and a point of exit for enslaved Africans from the region.

'Present-day Cameroon is one of the countries that we find ancestry results from most often, along with Nigeria and Sierra Leone,' said Gina Paige, President of the Washington-based African Ancestry, Inc.

The travelling party will include men and women of all ages and backgrounds who seek a historical and spiritual reconnection to their forebears.

'I have photographs of my slave ancestors who came from Cameroon,' said a member of the group, 'and I will be bringing those with me.

'The Cameroonian-Americans will be exposed to the culture and traditions of their ethnic communities of origin and have a chance to sample the great diversity in language, geography and religion that earned for Cameroon the name, 'Africa in Miniature'

.Scheduled to arrive on 27 December in Douala, Cameroon's economic capital, the group will leave for the US on 5 January.