TCNJ

37 WINTER 2018 Something like caption CLASS OF '13 ALUM'S ETHNIC MAKEUP INCLUDES A PAIR OF UNEXPECTED COUNTRIES The search continues Berridge bought test kits for her grandparents in Dominica. "I hope they'll spit," she says. J anika Berridge '13 was 7 years old when she moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, from Dominica, a mountainous Caribbean island. As she grew older, she became eager to explore her family history. "I wanted to know where exactly my DNA came from," says Berridge, an admissions counselor at TCNJ (and 2012 homecoming queen). "I could have guessed most of it would have come from Africa." Her DNA results from Ancestry traced 79 percent of her lineage to West Africa, including 35 percent from the tiny neighboring countries of Benin and Togo, 24 percent from Nigeria, and 11 percent from Mali. "I didn't know, but I imagined West Africa, because slavery, right?" Berridge says. "To me, I'm 100 percent Caribbean, because that's where I was born, as were my parents and their parents. Benin- Togo is not a place that usually comes to people's minds when they think of West Africa. I wasn't expecting that." Her results also found 9 percent Native American, a nod to her paternal grandmother's family, who is Kalinago, an indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles. Although she knew of this native link, Berridge says, "It's great knowing that a chunk of my ancestry lies right here in the Americas."

• Cover