As our van teetered precariously down the Mpumalanga mountainside, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Yet it wasn’t the heights that bothered me , but the close proximity to my squabbling siblings. My family was visiting South Africa so my brothers, sister, and I could explore our heritage and see the country where my mother was born. In theory, it was an excellent plan. In practice, putting five children in a van and traveling across a foreign country for a month was not the most realistic idea. “No! You aren’t allowed to do that! You’re making it so you’ll always win. It’s not fair!” My little brother argued. “What are you talking about? It’s Tic-Tac-Toe; the rules are simple” my sister snapped.

“Hey, both of you need to stop, please. I can’t concentrate on driving with all the fighting,” Mom intervened, saving me from having to mediate. They fell silent, and our drive continued. The scenery was breathtaking, with sheer cliffs, clear skies, and greenery stretching as far as the eye could see. We had only been in the country for a week, but I already had a deeper appreciation for my heritage.

South Africa was a whole different world than Washington state, where I lived. I’d visited South Africa once before, when I was six, but the memories I had were faint. This time, I found myself constantly comparing life between continents, ranging from the minutiae to the massive. I compared the lack of paper towels in South Africa to the abundance with which I was familiar; the fresh fruits and vegetables there to the invariable supermarket produce at home; the semi-regular power outages, known as loadshedding, to the reliable, automatic, electricity in my own life.

Over the next four weeks, we visited national parks, beaches, rainforests, deserts, cities. Everywhere, I grew more aware of how different South Africa was from everything I had ever known. The customs, the languages, and the food could not have been more different from America. During the final leg of our trip in Mosselbaai, near the southernmost point of the African continent, we visited Pinnacle Point, the Point of Human Origins. It holds evidence of human activity almost 200,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest human settlements on earth. To reach the cave at Pinnacle Point, we had to enter through a ritzy, polished, golf course. The ultramodern architecture of the course and estates felt at odds with the prehistoric, primeval nature of the caves at the base of the cliff. After a treacherous walk down several flights of stairs that looked as ancient as the cave itself, we reached our destination. As soon as we entered the cave, I felt an unexpected, undeniable, shift.

The air was damp, and smelled of the sea, but it also felt heavier, weighed down with 200 millennia of human history. Suddenly, the Mercedes and McMansions felt lightyears away. The sheer improbability of my journey to that moment was astounding. What did it mean, that hundreds of thousands of years ago, some of the only humans alive stood in the exact spot as I did? I breathed in air and memories, reveling in a place that held immense importance for the entire world. I had a sense of wonder I’d never experienced before.

Back at home, it was difficult to reconcile the memories of the trip with the prosaic realities of everyday life. It seemed almost like a dream - the wildlife and the beaches and the food - all thousands of miles away. My newfound knowledge of my heritage made me realize how much of my identity was connected to being American. But of all my memories of the trip, the feeling of Pinnacle Point, that fleeting moment of knowing, stayed with me the most, and helped me grasp what it meant to be human.

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