Gogo's Kitchen

Award-winning author Nozizwe Cynthia Jele relives her earliest food memories, from soft porridge (good) to her first brinjals (bad), all cooked by her grandmother

- Nozizwe Cynthia Jele

The first vivid memory I have of Gogo’s cooking is the smell of idokwe, soft porridge, which she makes for me and my brother every morning on her yellowand-green Welcome Dover stove. I am four years old, eyes wide with curiosity and mouth bursting with questions, while my brother, Lindani, two years younger, only wants a warm and quiet place to suck his thumb and rub his left eye. Our parents work far away and only come home at the end of every month. Sometimes Gogo makes the soft porridge creamy and sweet – I salivate as I look at the traces of butter, milk and melting sugar; other times she makes it sweet and sour, which we prefer to eat cold. We sit on the bench in Gogo’s kitchen, our backs to the mud wall, and eat our breakfast before scattering to the streets for a day’s play.