Four years ago, a university student from Chicago with no connection to Trinidad visited the island as part of a campus exchange programme.

This chance visit would lead to one of the most surreal moments of his life as it brought him face to face with a man whom he believes is a distant relative and propelled his desire to learn more about his ancestry.

A self-described Yankee, Khaliq Jabbar Muhammad always had an interest in the history of his family, the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Muhammad began researching his family's history while completing his undergraduate degree, tracing his roots across the southern US during the last days of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1800s.

Responding to Sunday Newsday's questions via e-mail on Tuesday, Muhammad, 28, who has since returned to the US, says visiting TT was a watershed moment and hopes to return to rediscover other distant relatives, while inspiring others to do the same.

He was born in Meadery, Louisiana, but Muhammad's family moved to South Shore on the east side of Chicago, where he grew up and went to school.

During this time his curiosity was piqued after listening to stories from some of his older relatives about the family's history.

"My grandmother's father was a businessman. He had a grocery store in rural Louisiana, and it was very profitable.

"I would hear stories about how self-sustained and how skilled he was as an entrepreneur.

"It was along that bloodline I was able to find the slave manifest for a ship called the Big Hayne that brought my ancestor, who they called Ben Johnson, from North Carolina to the Port of New Orleans. He was 17 years-old in 1846."

Using Ancestry.com and researching the records and logbooks of plantations in Louisiana, Muhammad found he was a descendant of the people from the Kingdom of the Kongo, in modern-day Angola and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He shared a screenshot of the results of his DNA test on Ancestry.com, showing he matched with inhabitants of Cameroon, the Congo and Western Bantu peoples.

Years later, in 2016, while completing his master's in global studies, Muhammad, looking for an opportunity to study abroad, registered for several courses at UWI's St Augustine campus.

Despite not knowing much about TT at the time, Muhammad said his sense of adventure and exploration was aroused after spending a semester at the National Cheng Chi University in New Taipei City, Taiwan, as an undergraduate, and he wanted to stray from the proverbial "beaten path" that most of his friends frequented.

[caption id="attachment_924282" align="alignnone" width="848"] A screenshot of the results of Khaliq Muhammad's DNA test from Ancestry.com which traces his family's origins to the Bantu peoples of Western Africa. Muhammad believes there are several other distant relatives that were brought from Africa in the Caribbean and hopes to find their descendents.- PHOTO COURTESY KHALIQ MUHAMMAD[/