For 40-some years, Donovan Webster happily traced his ancestry back to the Scotch-drinking, grouse-shooting and salmon-fishing variety. Just two swabs of his cheek, however, revealed a much different — and much more global — story. Below is an excerpt from Webster’s book Meeting the Family, which details his adventures meeting the real, far-flung members of his genetic family — from Lebanese Arabs to Spanish Basques, even click-talking Hadzabe bushmen in Tanzania.

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Julius Indaaya Hun/!un/!ume, a long-lost cousin of mine, and I were stalking the savannah of Tanzania’s Rift Valley. It was a June morning, cool and sun-blanketed, with the sheer, 1,000-foot cliffs of the Rift — and its hanging NgoroNgoro Crater — hovering above us like something from an Indiana Jones movie.

With each step, we scanned the underbrush and acacia trees overhead, looking for prey we’d convert into food. By reading game tracks in the powdery dirt, we knew gazelle and eland were moving stealthily ahead of us through the thickets. But before we got one, maybe we’d hit upon a lunchy-looking python or baboon dangling overhead.

Each time the breeze shifted, Julius turned to face it, to keep our scent from drifting downwind toward any animals we might find. As we walked, Julius (a small-boned, darkly black man wearing animal skins and carrying a handmade bow and arrows) was showing off his turf and explaining to me (a large white guy in jeans and moccasins using an interpreter) why my branch of the family had left home.

“Not everyone could stay,” he said, his language a series of clicks and pops indistinguishable to me. “Many of our original people moved away, your ancestors among them. But now you are back. We are pleased. You are very welcome here.”

A minute later, Julius’ dogs began barking excitedly, and from the densely vegetated banks of a dry riverbed ahead an animal squealed in fury. Julius paused to listen, ascertaining what direction and speed the prey was moving. He selected the few razor-tipped arrows he’d need, dropped the rest to the ground, and took off in a loose — and amazingly fast — sprint through the brush and brambles.

Two hundred yards and two minutes later, a boxy, gray-black warthog was lying on its side, bleeding out into Africa’s ash-colored silt. Julius was smiling triumphantly. His biggest arrow — its head made from nails heated and pounded into an aerodynamic dagger — had struck the hog just behind its left shoulder. “I got him in the heart,” Julius said, clicking. “He fell immediately to die.”

As the pig finished its throes, other male members of my extended family (the Hadzabe of East Africa, perhaps the world’s most ancient hunter-gatherers) rubbed sticks together and built a fire. The pig was rolled onto its back; its shoulders and ribs were neatly sliced free, with the snout, haunches, offal and fatty back saved for the clan’s women, children and elderly. When the fire was ready, the hog’s ribs and still-hairy front legs were dropped directly into the flames.

“This is how a day goes here,” Julius said. “The meat will be ready soon.”