Who is Gogo uMkhanyakude wase Manzini?
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Gogo uMkhanyakude wase Manzini spent much of her young adult years known as Rev. Dr. Dionne S. Wood, traveling the country as an itinerant evangelist and pastor. In her 30's, she after leaving Christianity as a believe system, she became known as Miss Buttafly, a captivating online presence known for her raw authenticity. Now, in her mid-40's, she is simply known as Gogo, a woman who has experienced much of what life has to offer, both pleasant and devastating and has learned to thrive regardless with the guidance of her ancestors.
Gogo is a prayer warrior, conjure woman, spiritual mother, traditional healer, and devotee of the Divine Feminine. She lives and works in Washington, DC, USA. There, she operates Sesizalo Ancestral Healing Institute.
With over 20 years of experience as a mentor and minister, Gogo is driven by her deep devotion to her ancestral calling to help heal the bodies, hearts and minds of Black womxn who've been wounded by colonization. In May 2021, Gogo relaunched her spirit-based business, The Buttafly Group, LLC, as a way to bring the sweetness and beauty of our ancestral ways of healing back to her community.
Gogo's healing focus is on psycho-spiritual wellness, with an emphasis on Grief & Trauma Release and Womb Healing for Black womxn. Our history here on this continent for the past 400 years has left us with gaping wounds in the fabric of our collective psycho-spiritual makeup. Through her media ministry, Miss Buttafly Speaks, Gogo has become a vocal advocate for this sensitive and urgent matters.
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Her spiritual community, family, and friends keep her grounded. As the mother of 3 young adult children, and grandmother to a rambunctious grandson, Gogo is constantly challenged to grow in ways she never imagined. Inspired by her own story of overcoming abuse, neglect, trauma, and depression through ancestral connection, Gogo has been called to share her gifts of healing with the world, hoping to inspire that same growth in others.​
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Text "Thokoza Gogo" to WhatsApp: +1 (202) 321-8701
Or email: gogoumkhanya@gmail.com
Working with Gogo uMkhanyakude
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Gogo is a multi-disciplinary healer. This means that her healing modalities encompass a variety of traditions that reflect her roots as a daughter of the Diaspora. She has many different ancestors with whom she works. Working with her might not look like anything you've seen before. Here's why.
Gogo was born to a lineage of Pentecostal preachers, prophets, and pastors. She, herself, was ordained as Pentecostal preacher in 2002. Though no longer affiliated with that licensing body, Gogo retains her ordination as it grants access to areas of service that may otherwise be restricted (i.e., hospital visits, weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc). As many of our people are self-identified as Christians, it is helpful to know how to speak to them in a language they understand.
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Gogo may implement prayer, scriptures and incantations from the Bible, candles, incense, and water in divination. During deep meditation, Gogo may speak in tongues, anoint with oil, and/or lay hands to administer healing.
Additionally, Gogo is a sangoma (traditional healer) in the South African spiritual tradition of uBungoma. She completed her 12-month long initiation period in South African in April of 2019. Frequently, sangomas are called shamans, though this word is used mostly within North American culture. In keeping with South African tradition, a person cannot choose the occupation of a sangoma. Instead, they are chosen by ancestral spirits who contact individuals in various ways.
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iSangoma work to heal physical ailments, social rifts, and anything else that plagues a certain community. While these healers go through various training rituals before practicing any healing arts, it is believed that a person's ancestors guide his or her hands through any healing process. Guided by ancestors and experience, these individuals work to keep a community intact mentally, physically, and even socially.
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Gogo may contact your ancestors who - in turn - may speak through Gogo to deliver messages specific to you. She dance, sing, clap, drum, and even speak in isiZulu to go into trance. You may hear her burp loudly or even speak with a different voice. Gogo may burn sacred herbs, divine with bones, prepare cleansing and/or protections remedies for you to take, take you to a river to cleanse, perform ritual sacrifice, instruct you to wear certain beads, or even inform you of your ancestral calling.
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Finally, Gogo is a Hoodoo/Conjure woman by birthright and by training. Both of the aforementioned areas of experience that Gogo brings with her are galvanized in her existence as a Black American Hoodoo/Conjure woman. Gogo comes from a long maternal line of Hoodoo/Conjure womxn, prayer warriors, spiritual mothers, and prophetesses. Gogo is a spiritual mother, which means that she is seen as an elder within her community as has spiritual children that she is instructing and training. Her ancestral calling is to take up the mantle left behind by those who have gone before her.
Gogo may use herbs, potions, amulets, prayers, oils, anointed cloths, drums, prayer, water, laying hands, dancing in the Spirit, protective baths, specific rites and rituals to change your situation.
Hoodoo and uBungoma, along with all other ATRs (African Traditional Religions) are spiritual technologies that allow us to connect with our ancestors based on their particular rites and rituals. For Gogo, she has uBungoma to honor her more ancient African ancestral guides, and Hoodoo to honor those ancestors who lived and died on this American soil. Fundamentally, there is no separation between these methodologies. The culture differs, but not the Spirit.
Even with regard to Pentecostalism, outside of the psycho-spiritual attachment to the idea of suffering and the crippling need for a savior, the expression of Spirit seen within the modern Black church is purely African. Our ancestors found a way to hide their mysteries within the church to preserve them. Despite the unfortunate usurpation of Jesus as the central figure of our liberation, Hoodoo remains a strong and viable force. To this day, there is no Black church without it. And within uBungoma, there are healers whose main calling is to prayer and prophecy. All of these spiritual technologies are indigenous to our Blackness.
