19/03/2026
🔥 Around the Fire at kaGogo’s Rondavel
Back home, fire was never just fire.
It was a summons.
As soon as the sun dipped behind the hills, we would drift toward kaGogo’s rondavel — drawn by the glow, the smell of wood smoke, and the promise of whatever she was stirring in her blackened pot. The flames cracked softly, as if they too were listening, waiting for her stories to begin.
Inside that circle of warmth, we were more than a family.
We were a lineage.
KaGogo would prepare meals the way her mother had taught her, and her mother before that — each movement a memory, each spice a story. And as we ate, she would weave tales of where we came from, who we belonged to, and the ancestors who walked before us. The fire lit her face in gold, and in that light, the past felt close enough to touch.
Those evenings held us together.
They shaped our identity without us even realising it.
Now, living in the UK, with its cold evenings and electric heaters, we miss that sacred gathering. We miss the way the fire gathered us without effort, the way stories rose like smoke and settled into our bones. We miss the simplicity of connection — unhurried, unfiltered, unbroken.
Here, we carry those memories like embers.
They remind us who we are.
They remind us what must never be lost.
Because oral history is not just spoken — it is lived, shared, and passed on in the glow of moments that warm the soul.
