I recently made a DNA test. My father was from Sierra Leone and I found out something quite extraordinary: from his side of the family I had some Papuan and Native American from the Amazon. As we all know, these were not places from which people travelled to other countries or continents. How on earth could a Papuan from Oceania or an Amazonian from South America end up in Africa? These were all countries that were visited by the Portuguese who had slaves, right? Yet I'm not aware from which countries they had slaves from.
I hope this will spark some interesting conversation. Thank you.
We can't know for sure, but you should consider the possibility that someone from Africa was sold into slavery and transported to South America, and that slave or one of their kin then had children with a native South American also subjugated by Europeans.
Some Native Americans had Oceanic blood, which would explain the Papuan connection.
Sierra Leone was established as a British colony around 1800, with the British delivering emancipated slaves from the Americas to Freetown (hence the name) after the British abolition of slavery in 1807.
That's a fairly reasonable explanation. An African was kidnapped into slavery sometime before 1800, then that slave or their ancestors had children with a South American, and those children or their descendants ended up back in Africa with the establishment of Sierra Leone. Many years later, your dad married your mom and you were born.
You might also want to post this over at /r/genealogy.
Where did the Portuguese transport their slaves? Everyone to the Americas or some to Portugal as well? It would make more sense that Amazonian slaves from Brazil and West African slaves were transported to Portugal where the slaves had children and after that the ex-slaves were transported to Africa? Or my Amazonian ancestor travelled to West Africa with my presumably West African ancestor?