I am the only millennial in my cohort of Gen z’s. the year difference is minimal but one of the things that shocked me most is that most of the people in my cohort don’t know about kunta kinte and Alex haley’s famous 1976 book roots.

Growing up, I had never read the book but i knew the story, seen some of the show and certainly knew the name kunta kinte. Roots was part of the generation before mine but bits and pieces carried over to my generation so most of us at least had heard the name kunta kinte.

so on the day that we received our permanent site placements during Pre-service training and I pulled down the face mask that was over my eyes (yes, they used a covid face mask as a blindfold) and i saw that my permanent site would be “the birthplace of kunta kinte” I was completely overwhelmed.

My village is technically the close conjoining village, but the two villages exist as one and they blend into each other. there is still a kunte kunda compound standing, there are living relatives of the kinte family living and there is even a Kunta Kinte lodge. the small Kunta kinte island (formerly James Island fort, one of the principle places for trans-shipments of slaves) dots the horizon on the river gambia right across from my compound and gets 30-40 tourists every day. My village also now hosts our own annual kunte kinte festival (formerly called the roots festival).

Kunta kinte is all around me every day.

Therefore, after buying a thick copy of Roots in the charming Timbooktoo bookstore in the city last weekend, I decided to take advantage of the more relaxed pace of ramadan that just started to read the classic for myself. I read it in only a few days.

If there was a suggestion box for peace corps, i would write on a slip of paper that each peace corps post should chose a culturally significant piece of literature from or relating to that country of service and require each volunteer to read it before staging. In peace corps the Gambia’s case, I would highly suggest one of those pieces of literature being Roots.

Roots directly ties The Gambia and America together. millions of West Africans were taken against their will as slaves and shipped to the Americas in the trans atlantic slave trade.

after 12 years of research, American alex Haley traced his ancestry 7 generations to Kunta Kinte stolen by slavers in the 1760’s from this very small village here on the river Gambia in West Africa. he crafted the stories of his lineage from generation to generation based on contextual facts and oral histories. the detailed lives of each ancestor’s story is fabricated yet historically probable. As a result, “Roots” is riveting, emotional and moving.

In 1977 Roots was adapted into a tV mini-series which received 130 million viewers over 8 nights: At the time the highest rated TV mini-series ever. I have heard stories of families rushing home every night to tune in and this never before done 8-night in a row airing was the first occurrence of binge-watching.

although there has been a lot of controversy since regarding the accuracy of Roots as well as scrutiny over Haley’s plagiarism, Roots is still undoubtedly one of the most influential novels of the century. The novel and the television adaptation articulated the horrors of the slave trade, the history of slavery in the united states and introduced millions to black history genealogy.

the profound experience of this book for me has been reading it in my small compound in the very place the book centers itself. Roots is not only about the gambia, but it is about the very village i have been placed in the gambia. The opening descriptions of the village where Kunte grows up among the large bayobab trees, the river gambia, the sounds of the animals, the smells of the food and the construction of small thatched roof huts: it all feels the same. The differences from then and now are the additional 450 compounds with corrugated metal roofs , the roads that have been laid, the cars, motorcycles and busses of tourists that pass through daily, shops, Schools and a clinic: developments that gradually happened over the past almost 250 years since Kinte was here. but it is still a small mandinka village that maintains the same traditions and customs.

Walking anywhere here you will step on seashells. They crust the sand and remind you how close you are to the river gambia and also the atlantic ocean. seeing seashells in general is typically a welcome and charming sight, stirring up memories of a beach vacation or of somewhere tropical with fondness. Here, my experience with these shells is one that is sad. every once in a while i bend down to pick one up and feel it in my hands. but i am reminded just how close the ocean is and what that closeness meant 300 years ago.