Andwele means “God brought & delivered me” in Swahili. He was born November 20, 1977 in the capital of Suriname, Paramaribo. Suriname is a small country on the northern coast of South America where the official language is Dutch. He currently lives on the island of Saint Maarten in the West Indies where he works as a clinical pharmacist. His journey into unearthing his family history started as a child...being fascinated by stories told at family gatherings. Stories that connected him to people long dead before he was born...but whose stories helped to shape his identity...and fed his hunger to fill in the blanks.

In this episode, Andwele's story begins with a 1926 photograph featuring his great grandmother on the occasion of her 60th birthday. It was his curiosity about the people in that picture that made him always listen to stories from his mother’s siblings and cousins about those memories from their childhood, and bits and pieces of information that they remembered about stories that were told to them.

Music by Sean Bempong.