By the books, I am an American. Passport, birth certificate, social security card. They all attest to my citizenship. But I was not born in America, and despite the documentation, I do not feel very American.
In fact, I’ve been locked in a love affair with Africa, the land of my birth – the Motherland – for many years.
My parents, Americans from Pennsylvania and Florida, packed up my two older sisters and moved to Maun, Botswana, in 1990. I was born three years later in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised between Botswana, Zimbabwe and the United States until 2003.
After that long adventure of moving about from place to place, we left Africa when I was 10 years old, and we’ve been settled in central Kentucky for the last decade. In fact, the 10-year anniversary of my departure from Africa will be this July, and it’s been something of a gloomy countdown waiting for the date.
This anniversary has coincided with another milestone in my life: my 20th birthday. A quarter of my life will have been lived, and the confluence of important dates has purred my pursuit of identity.
Who am I? Where do I belong? What do I want to accomplish?
Though these questions often feel profound to the inquirer, they are questions that most all of us will ask ourselves at one point or another. For some, the answers are much harder or easier to come by than for others.
As I reach this milestone and ask myself these questions, it has become apparent that I must return to Africa to find answers. Cape Town, South Africa, to be specific.
My journey to Cape Town, the Mother City, started earlier this year in February, when an old African history professor of mine encouraged me to apply for an internship in the Cape.
After much paperwork and fundraising, I landed that internship with a group called Inyathelo. Starting on June 4, I will be running media campaigns for NPOs in the Cape Town area.
But I am in no mood to wait until June. On my birthday, May 19, I will hop a plane from Lexington to Atlanta, after which I will cross the Atlantic to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam, I'll take the 11-hour flight and land in Cape Town at 9:35 p.m. on May 20.
There I will stay in the home of old family friends from Maun until I must move into my internship housing. Hopefully I can find some answers and get myself together once I get there.
On paper, I am American. But at my core, I feel allegiant to the Motherland. Here in the Mother City, I hope to find answers. May whatever I find be useful not just to me, but to anyone who has wondered who they are and where they belong.
Thank you for joining me on my African journey.
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