Given that Mr. Mandela died at 95, few people around here can remember his childhood. He was born in 1918 in the nearby village of Mvezo but moved to Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, not long after. When he was 9, his father died, and his mother sent him away to the town of Mqhekezweni, where a regional chief, Jongintaba Dalindyebo, took him under his wing.

For the young Mandela, leaving Qunu was as traumatic as losing his father, he wrote in his autobiography: “I loved it in the unconditional way that a child loves his first home.”

Mr. Mandela would never forget this village or the people he met there, residents say with evident pride.

“It was quite overwhelming because when he walked around, whoever he meets on the way, he would greet you, he would shake your hand and ask you, ‘Who are you and who’s your mother?’ ” said Ms. Tetani, 53, who has spent her entire life here and now works for the Nelson Mandela Museum in Qunu. “And he would remember the people from the village.”

When Zandisile Phapu, 76, met Mr. Mandela at a feast at his home years ago, he told him his surname, and Mr. Mandela remembered Mr. Phapu’s father “like yesterday,” he said.

“Mandela was a very jolly person; he used to joke with us,” said Mr. Phapu, sitting in his home on a green hillside, which overlooks a structure in the distance that resembles a massive domed jungle gym being built to shield Mr. Mandela’s burial on Sunday.

But Mr. Mandela’s colloquial manner did not mean there was any lack of reverence toward him, Mr. Phapu said: “We see Mandela as our god.”