Rachel Décoste | Connecting With Place and Culture in Africa

Stories in Our Roots 0:03
Welcome to the Stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives. Today, discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connected deeply with ourselves, those be loved, and the world around us.

Heather Murphy 0:26
Welcome to Stories in Our Roots, I am Heather Murphy. Today's interview is with Rachel Decoste, who is an educator and immigration policy expert. Rachel knew a little bit about her family history, but not much since she was from Haiti and didn't have access to the records that she needed to go back further in her family. One point she decided to turn to DNA to answer some questions about who she was. And I was fortunate would have it she was given the gift of time and made a trip to Africa to explore her heritage there based on her DNA results. I'm sure you will love this conversation. And if you want even more, Rachael made an audio book of her experiences in Africa. And you can find the link to that in the show notes. Here is my interview with Rachel Decoste.

Thank you, Rachel, for joining me today, I am looking forward to learning about your stories and the things that you've been able to learn as you've learned about your ancestry. Now to start with, I'd like to ask you what you knew about your family before you went into taking a DNA test?

Rachel Decoste 1:37
Well, I knew both my parents were born in rural Haiti, I knew my grandmother raised eight children by herself after her husband passed away. He was very young, and she was pregnant with number eight when he passed away. And she managed to raise them by ourself at a time where women were not considered leaders, manage a store, put them through school, we have a doctor, we have many professional nurses. And that was something that I thought was kind of interesting and pretty cool for a woman to be able to do that. On my dad's side, I knew that my grandfather had many, many, many children. And when I inquired about it, I found out that my grandfather was very wealthy in the rural Haiti kind of wealth. And he was so wealthy that at a time when school was not necessarily free, and you had to have your own uniform sewn for every child, he was able to buy batches of fabric like the whole roll, he would buy every year so that every one of his children would have a brand new uniform, which was a sign of not just pride, but also wealth for that time period. We're talking about the 1930s, probably. So I thought that was two stories of my grandparents that showed that they didn't fit the stereotype of poor people from Haiti who are starving. Neither side fit that stereotype. And I was always fascinated by that.

Heather Murphy 3:23
And so were you able to learn these stories directly from them?

Rachel Decoste 3:27
I learned them from my aunts and uncles, my parents are not always forthcoming with their past. But I did learn from aunts and uncles and us cousins sometimes would get together and put pieces together of the stories that we've heard so that we could make a whole story out of it. And sometimes it's just maybe we go camping or a long road trip to New York City or something that provides a space for us to talk because there's nothing else to do in the car for eight hours. And those are the times where I asked questions, and I might get really interesting stories out of it. Another cool story was that my grandmother, her husband, who died very young, he had had a wife and a child before he was married to my grandmother. I never knew about this. After he died, the first wife and this child came running for a piece of the estate. It turns out that my grandfather who was a cobbler, I was told he was a cobbler, but turns out he had a factory. He had workers who made custom shoes, like it wasn't just a cobbler, he had a business and employees. And so and he had a house a house, so that was worth something. And apparently they went to courts and the court had said if you can't work out a deal, you're going to have to sell everything the house every item you have in the store down to the nickels. Split that so that she can get her whatever it is 10% sense. And then you'll go on with your life. But when you're pregnant with number eight, the eighth child, then you have seven other mouths to feed. That's not a good prospect of losing your home and your business. So it turns out that through a friend of the family, which may be a priest, I'm not sure. They got advice, saying, you should sell off a portion of the house. Apparently, there was a back house or a side house or some kind of thing that might be a garage today. They sold that to the lady. She took it, she lost it. And then they bought it back from her. And all's well, that ends well, but it took some ingenuity to save her family and her house. And that's another story that makes my me think that my grandmother was stronger. Probably one of the strongest women I've ever met in my life. I did not know that when when she was alive. I found this out after she had passed away.

Heather Murphy 5:59
Wow. So what does it meant for you to learn these stories about your grandparents?

Rachel Decoste 6:03
It made me feel like I come from a good stock of people. And it made me wonder what else is there? Who else is there? How far back Can we go? And aside from getting names of obviously, my parents know the names of their grandparents. That's all I have. I think there might have been a chance for me to go further back into the archives in Haiti. But after the Haiti quake, which was about 10 years ago, there was an earthquake that happened in the capital. And pretty much all the official buildings were ruined. I have a feeling that that's probably where any archives that exists are so lost, and may be gone by now.

Heather Murphy 6:44
So you don't know pretty much anything past your parents, grandparents?

Rachel Decoste 6:48
I don't know anything past that.

Heather Murphy 6:50
Is that what led you to want to take this DNA test?

Rachel Decoste 6:54
Definitely, that was a huge factor. I mean, I can't trace back every single person, but it would be cool to find out where my ancestors came from. We know that we're from Africa, obviously. And we have some French ancestry because Haiti was once a French colony. And that's probably where my last name comes from. But go back further than that. There's a question mark. Thank goodness that DNA tests are affordable now. And that was a way for me to find out where in a huge continent of Africa with 50 plus countries, where could I go, where people maybe might look like me? Maybe I could rekindle some of the cultural things that we lost, you know, as descendants of enslaved people, we lost our original names, our original religion, culture, the cuisine, the songs, the language, obviously, I speak French, because Haiti was a French colony. But I'm pretty sure the enslaved people that came off the boat didn't speak French when they caught off the boat. So all those things have been lost through the 400 year, peculiar institution that is transatlantic slavery. And so the idea of the DNA is that I can find that out. Maybe. And yes, that's that was definitely a big factor in my doing the test and trying to find out which lands I can maybe claim as my own.

Heather Murphy 8:24
And what was your experience when you receive those DNA results back?

Rachel Decoste 8:28
It was like Christmas, ancestry Christmas, where you find out what part of the map you can maybe explore. And since that day, I remember I emailed all my so I have Nigerian in me, I have malyon. I have all the West African countries, a little bit of Ghana, a little bit of Senegal, a little bit of Togo, Benin, and all the friends that I have that have that ancestry, or maybe they're more recent immigrants. I emailed all of them and said, we might be cousins.

Heather Murphy 9:01
Now can you kind of set the stage for us of what was going on in your life before you decided to take this trip?

Rachel Decoste 9:09
I had gone to live and work in Washington, DC, I was managing a large national initiative to promote computer science across America. That's also my undergrad. It was a fun job. And I was there temporarily and my visa ended. So it was time to go home after three and a half years, which is great. My boss changed his mind. And he said, you know, we tried to keep you tried to do the visa thing. h1 visa lottery, we didn't win. But we can't replace you right away. We want you to go home to Canada, and work for us for another six months while we work on your replacement. And you also help find your replacement. I said, Okay. And I thought about it and I was like, I don't want to be 40 years old and working from my mom's basement and perhaps it's an opportunity to work remotely from African countries. So within less than a week I got my shots, I selected my apartment and flew direct from DC to car, I found a friend of a friend, a friend who got me in a place to stay in some room in somebody's apartment. And I just kind of flew by the seat of my pants for six months, I worked approximately noon to 8pm their time. And then on mornings and weekends, I was a tourist.

Heather Murphy 10:29
So what was it like for you when you first got there? What were you feeling?

Rachel Decoste 10:34
I thought I would feel something when the plane landed, but I didn't. So then I thought what maybe when I physically walk on the land that my last ancestor would have walked on, three, 300 years ago, maybe I feel I'll feel something. And I did feel something, it felt like maybe I was home, it was a positive feeling. It was the start of a great adventure, I have to say, maybe also because I was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada, which is very, very white, at least it was in the 80s. I'm not used to seeing myself reflected. everywhere I go. I've never had a teacher who looked like me. There's just some things that don't happen when you live in my most of Canada actually. So just being there and seeing looking around at everybody looks like me, their hair is just as kinky as my hair, their body shape. Many of us Afro descendants are a little bit taller, a little bit wider, our curves are a little bit more pronounced. And it's sometimes hard to find clothes in the department store that fits. And here I'm in this place where everybody has the same body shape. And I'm the norm, I'm no longer the outlier. That was such a warm feeling. I loved it. I loved going to the bank and seeing everybody in the bank look like me, the posters look like me. There's an exhibit that was once I believe at the MoMA. It's called the Infinity mirror. And that's what it felt like it was dizzying when you see copies of yourself everywhere at all times, for the first time in your life. It made me dizzy, but in a good way.

Heather Murphy 12:15
Yeah. And I don't think a lot of white Americans that have that experience of always being seeing themselves. And I really understand what that would feel like, I got a little bit of a taste of kind of what you might feel like when I moved to just north of Miami, and like my church congregation, I was the minority. And I can't imagine what that would feel like for you to go someplace where everybody looks like you. And I don't think us as white Americans or me as white Americans really understand what that feels like.

Rachel Decoste 12:53
You know, I don't think I understood what it felt like until I saw the other side. It's not something I've ever really thought about until I felt it and saw it and lived it. So yes, that's definitely a great feeling. Another great feeling that I had was that, like I said, I thought we lost everything through the 400 years of slavery. And when I was taking a taxi once in San Diego, they had an almost accident where the they have to swerve a little bit. And the taxi driver said white. And I was like, I've heard that word but that expression before. And when the situation calmed down, I asked him so what were you saying when we almost swerved and gotten an accident? He said, Oh, it was just an expression. It's something you say when you're surprised by something like, and I'm like, that's exactly the expression that they use in Haiti, in the Haitian Creole language. Now Creole, by definition means a mix of languages. So it's mixed a French and African languages, we don't really know which ones. But clearly that word stuck. And it's still there 400 years later. And it was just great to reclaim that to realize that we haven't lost and everything. Part of the way that people walk, the way they interact with each other. The kissing of the lips. Like they do that there too. There are so many things that I felt like we've kept over this all this time and space. And it was heartwarming to see that.

Heather Murphy 14:32
Yeah, that I imagine that would be amazing to see those connections, especially because they're so far apart, like you said over time and space. What are some of the experiences that you had while you were there that were most meaningful to you?

Rachel Decoste 14:49
I'll have to start with the hardest. And that's visiting the slave memorials the remaining spaces where my answer What has been, you know kidnapped. In the rural areas usually march for days and weeks to the coastal area, they would have a structure where, at first, it was used to house goods like gold. And starting in the 1600s, they started using that those spaces to house people before they would be shipped off to the Americas. In Ghana, they call them slave castles, the word castle doesn't quite seem like the right word to describe these dungeons. And just walking through those spaces where there's just the air is so thin, there is darkness all around. And even though I'm well fed, could you imagine being young because most of the people that were kidnapped, most of them are were children, meaning they were under 21. And having so little food and whittling down and if you resist in any way, there's violence, there's torture, or they just dumped your body overseas and find somebody else. Going through that is I feel like that's maybe what a Jewish person would feel like if went to Auschwitz. It's not it's not a pleasant experience. But you kind of have to go to see what your ancestors went through. Yes, it was painful. Yes, I cried. It's impossible not to cry. In fact, I think my voice is trembling, just talking about it. But that came out of that, realizing that during the time where they were, usually Europeans orchestrated civil wars between tribal groups to try to get prisoners of war. Some of them died during the war, and then they would be marched down to be sold into slavery, they might have died on the way to the slave castle, half of them would die while waiting to be shipped. And then we know that many of them died on the way to the Americas. So by the time you calculate all those odds, the chances that I'm here now, I'm not I wasn't supposed to make it. My ancestors were not supposed to make it. If this was a Vegas betting, any logical person would have would not have bet that I'll be here today to talk about it. I've often heard that they took the strongest and the best of the breeze to come to slavery. I thought there was something they said to make us feel better. Turns out, it's true. I see that strong stock in my parents, my grandparents. And perhaps I see it myself more in that more than ever.

Heather Murphy 17:42
Yeah, those rough parts of history. And it's great that we can pull good things out of it. But it's also good for us to acknowledge it for what it is.

Rachel Decoste 17:54
It's a horrible chapter of human history. And I found strength in going there. I did, I found strength. And I found that I owe it to all those ancestors who didn't make it to live my best life. That's what they would want for me. Beautiful.

Stories in Our Roots 18:16
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Heather Murphy 19:01
So to transition out of that, what are some different experiences that you had?

Rachel Decoste 19:06
Well, there's so many as a North American, we're used to running by a clock. And of course, I was working indirectly for the United States Congress while I was over there. So if I have a lunch hour, which matches their supper time, and I go out, get my food, I need to buy it, eat it and come back to work within an hour or less. And specifically in Ivory Coast. They had a restaurant, row, outdoor barbecue row, very organized. And you march up there and you say I'd like this chicken and this rice and then the woman says Okay, wait one moment, just have a seat and wait a moment. I said, Okay, and I said just so you know, I could go to the bakery and get my baguette and come back. So if you're going to take a little bit of water I'll just let me know, I'll come back. Oh, no, they'll be ready in a moment. And 40 minutes go by, and I'm still waiting. And it's my lunch hour. I know, I have to eat and get back. And I probably have meetings, and I'm still waiting for my food. And I'm wondering what is going on? How come you don't know how long it takes you to make the food? What is going on? At the end, I think I waited like maybe 15 minutes for my food, five, zero 50. But the lesson is that in these countries, you kind of have to go with the flow. And what we speak, whether it's English or French in North America, is not necessarily what they speak, but the words are the same. But it doesn't mean the same thing. And you probably have to plan for that plan for those mishaps and try to laugh at them. I remember I was in bed and breakfast for at least like two weeks. And I said, you don't have to clean my room every day. Just clean the floor out. I'll say the floor is the plushy just clean the floor. And she goes, What's the floor? I go? Well, just where we step on, can you just clean that. And basically the word for floor is different over there than it is for me. And we ended up doing pointing to figure out what I was supposed to say or what word they use. So you know when in Rome, you adjust, but it was funny, it's It was fun. It was all good fun, as long as you can accept that the schedule may not go as planned. And whenever I had a flat in a taxi or some kind of slowdown, I would get out of the car and walk around and see what's out there before while they're fixing the tire. You know, you don't have to worry about it. You can you can discover all the other things. In fact, I remember buying really nice fabric while I was waiting for a taxis tire to be fixed. And that end up being addressed.

Heather Murphy 21:58
The what pieces of your culture or the history that you can somewhat envision, since you only have these DNA results, were you able to kind of absorb or see while you were in these different countries.

Rachel Decoste 22:14
I think I saw a lot of African people who make something out of nothing. And I found that that's a metaphor for Haiti. And a metaphor for my parents and for me, that we don't come from wealth, but we managed to make it work and work hard. And I saw that everywhere in West Africa. I saw a lot of strong women, which harks back to my grandmother, you know, you go to the beach to hang out on the off. And there are women that are selling usually either they're sewing, I feel like they're selling boiled eggs, and cans of peanuts on their head. And I took a picture this woman was she looked like she was nine months pregnant. She had a baby on her back. And she had a huge package of goods to sell on top of her head. She had helped to get it up on her head. And she's walking along the beach trying to sell this stuff. And I'm thinking, Wow, what a strong woman. Nobody else is noticing her because I guess this is normal. But it struck me how strong these people have to be to keep going. And I felt that my grandmother was from that stock of people. Another cultural thing that I've I don't want to say I brought it back because it was already there. But intuition is very strong for my family. I found that it comes from Africa that if you wake up one day, and your gut tells you, maybe today's not the day to go on that day trip and you just kind of follow your gut, there's no reason there's no logic to it. That's something that they respect over there, because it's part of their everyday life. And I found that what is considered weird in my Canadian white friends, was considered normal there. So I thought that's a very interesting link. The cuisine was not that different from what I ate growing up with my mom cooking Haitian food, I thought that the cuisine was very similar. In fact, some of the foods were exactly the same that she says she ate when she was a child. So it feels like if we kept our cuisine intact, from West Africa, there was so many wonderful realizations that I really feel I call myself a Canadian before the trip, but after this and with the DNA, I call myself an African now with pride.

Heather Murphy 24:43
How are you different because of your experience in Africa?

Rachel Decoste 24:47
I feel like I'm more centered in who I am. Where I come from. That was a huge question mark. I've had most of my life growing up being often the only black girl in class. Being othered usually with the question, Where are you from? Or where are you really from? Because it's impossible that you could be a Canadian even though I was born four kilometers from the seat of Parliament, and I've lived here my whole life. And I speak like one and I say a the end of my sentences. Somehow it wasn't conveyed that I was home when I was in my place of birth. That's a question mark I've always had and I no longer have that question. I know where I'm from. In fact, there's some villages and rural been in that. And I looked around, I felt like I saw my cousin, my aunt, a friend of the family. And I don't need a refined DNA tests know what village my ancestor came from, because I absolutely know that's one of them. There's no doubt in my mind, and just knowing where you're from, I feel like I have a kinship with people who are adopted. Want to know, even though they had a great adoptive mom and dad and family, there's just that need to know. And I don't have that need anymore. I know exactly where I'm from.

Heather Murphy 26:02
That's great. And that's a way other people can kind of relate to how that feels. If you're adopted. We talk about that all the time and genealogy these lines that we don't know. And I think that's really interesting that that's the way you felt.

Rachel Decoste 26:17
That's definitely how I felt it felt. And I don't have the questions anymore. I know where I feel like I know where I'm from now. And one last thing I brought back with me in Benin, and Togo, when entire families go out on weekends to the beach, or to a restaurant, or to religious celebration, the whole family will show up with the same fabric, they had custom made dresses, and top and bottom. For men, it's called a boomba. Over there, everybody's wearing the same fabric. And I thought what a great way to show unity. And also if a kid goes weren't wandering around, you can know where the parents are. So I took that home with me. And I have matching outfits for my mom, my dad, and my goddaughter also has a matching dress within which we were when we go to the museum together or whatever outing we go out, and we are seeing and, and we make a scene, I felt like that was a good thing to bring back to reaffirm where I'm from, and also to spread it hopefully to the rest of the family.

Heather Murphy 27:23
That is great. I like that I can just picture in my mind. I think that's a great thing to bring back.

Rachel Decoste 27:31
Definitely.

Heather Murphy 27:32
If someone was wanting to go on a pilgrimage and ancestral pilgrimage, like what you went on, what advice would you give them?

Rachel Decoste 27:40
First of all, just do it. Just go. Especially if you have the gift of time, which is what I had in a rare occasion in my life. go explore try to go not just to the big cities, because that's where the airports are, but go to the rural areas, because I feel like there's more authentic cultural experiences in the rural areas, and just be open. I love that I lived with the people even though it was in the bed and breakfast once it was a room in a house basically, which means I had to go on the street like everybody else, take the street taxi and took the real boss in Ghana, where that you have the chickens in the bus with you. I just enjoy an experience. There's nothing like being home. And while you're enjoying the chicken in the bus with you, you can also kind of Daydream of what it would have been like for your ancestors are, how they would have lived that decades or centuries ago. just embrace even the mishaps become funny stories at the end. I encourage everybody to do this pilgrimage, whether you're from originally from Africa or somewhere else, there's something about going to your ancestral land that cannot be measured in money. It just can't be measured. It's a measurable. That's great advice.

Heather Murphy 29:03
And you have put together an audio book that was published this month. Is that correct?

Rachel Decoste 29:09
It came out last month in February. Basically I recorded my six month trip, the adventures the mishaps, the funny things, the sad things the slavery tour, but also the camel tour on in the desert, everything I just talked about the experience. And that basically came about because when I talked about it to my friends and my family, I held an audience for hours. They were so excited, so interested. And I thought I wanted to share that with a wider audience. So I recorded it, it's available online. That's sort of my way of keeping the story alive for others for others who haven't yet done the trip and others who haven't want to remember it by or even just tourists that are interested in going to West Africa. The book is called year of return and the website is A year of return book.com.

Heather Murphy 30:03
Okay, and I will have links in the show notes for that in case anybody is interested. I'm sure it's full of all sorts of different stories. Definitely. Thank you so much, Rachel, for being on the podcast. It's been great to hear your experiences and your travels in learning more about your family history.

Rachel Decoste 30:24
Thank you for having me.

Stories in Our Roots 30:25
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai