Sebokeng: A home, not a place.

She's a home.

Not just the place you come back to when the world leaves you tired. Not just the street with the broken gate or Gogo calling for you from her stoep. She’s the feeling of walking into a room where nobody expects you to explain yourself. She’s the smell of cooking that you can recognise from far away, the one that makes you forget the taste of fancy food. She’s that couch with the sunken cushion where you used to nap as a kid, the one your mother said she’d throw out but never did.

She’s the warmth of “Eish, you’re back, my child,” said with a smile that tries not to show how much she missed you. She’s the softness in the tough hands that used to smack you for backchat but now just wants to make sure you’ve eaten. She’s the rhythm in your voice, the slang in your sentences, and the bounce in your walk that says, “I’m from somewhere real.”

She’s that feeling you get when you’re far away, too far, too clean, too polished, and you hear a song that reminds you of her. Suddenly, you’re back there, standing outside my friend's shop with a lollipop and the sun hot on your skin. You can almost hear the taxis hooting and the deep house booming from someone’s car. You remember the woman selling fat cakes with hands that move fast, like they’ve been making them since forever.

She’s the reason you don’t flinch when things get hard, because you’ve seen her fix a broken tap with nothing but wire and hope. You’ve seen her laugh with missing teeth, dance with heavy feet, and love with a fierceness that made you believe you were unstoppable. She’s the reason you know how to fight for your dreams but also how to laugh at yourself when the world says “no”.

She’s home because she sees all the parts of you, even the ones you hide. She knows the version of you that tried to leave and the version that stayed behind. She knows your dreams, your disappointments, your fears, and your fire. She doesn’t ask you to be perfect. She just asks you to be yourself. To remember that no matter how far you go, no matter how big you get, you come from something that was always bigger than fear.

She’s home because she’s proof that love doesn’t have to be loud or poetic. Sometimes, it’s just the way she packs you a plate even when she’s tired. The way she lets you sleep in. The way she tells everyone about you, like you’re the president. The way she lets you be “too much” because deep down, she knows you’re everything she never got to be. When you stand in the mirror and doubt yourself, when you think the world is too big and you’re too small, just remember her. Remember the woman who never gave up, who learned how to turn struggle into survival, who wore her wounds like medals. Remember the kasi that raised you, loud and rough and real, the one that taught you to hold your head high even when your pockets were empty.

That’s home. Not perfect, not polished, but yours. Forever.