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Growing up my mother would sing our family names, that is izitemo, or izangelo. This is poetry that named me by naming the trajectory of my ancestors’ migration from South Africa to Zimbabwe. One of the phrases I remember was her say saying “Kimatebele mantsu”. This is apparently what was said about my ancestors as they passed through Botswana.  

 

My father shared his dream of going back to Lesotho where his forefathers had come from. It wasn’t one of those dreams where you save money and set a date. Rather it was those things you say as an acknowledgement of where you come from through expressing the desire of a return. My father is buried koBulawayo where I was born. This is not where he was born, he did not grow up where he was born either, my father wrote a poem about the time they migrated from the place of his birth to the place where his parents are buried. This is the first time he had to drink goat milk because he had to move with his mother and the smaller livestock while his father moved with the cattle.

 

When I graduated with my PhD my father was no longer among the living and my mother wrote a poem about me saying kuzelwe intombi. 

 

I am a scholar writing poetry about migration and mobility because it is the inheritance I recieved and carry with pride. It is the knowledge shut up in my bones like fire.

 

I live and I dance to re-write the archives.