Piece #2: October 31, 2026

"Check back in for notes." That’s how I left things on July 16, 2021 (five years ago), from a third-floor kitchen of an Airbnb in Bukoto, Kampala. I promised reflections on South Asian-Ugandan history, neighborhood thalis, bukoto and the high walls of expat bubbles. And then, I went ghost. 

Shortly after hitting publish on that piece, the external COVID-19 lockdown of 2021 gave way to a more unrelenting internal one. The capacity-questioning I mentioned back then felt heavier than the usual writer’s block. 

Everyone has an inner critic, and mine is normally a useful guide, pushing me to sit with context and press past the easy answers. But at that point in time, mine also morphed into a form so menacing, I needed to get rid of it before it did me. 

So, instead of venturing Kampala’s streets with the intention to write, my time outside of work fixated on a different kind of site visit: intensive talk therapy, antidepressants, confidence coaching, and the slow hacking of the walls I’d built around myself. I always liked to believe

The process, particularly the medication, offered much-needed numbing and repair to a system that reached its limit, but half-feeling things isn't exactly great fuel for writing. It would be a lie to say I stopped putting thoughts to paper altogether…but the bits I wrote never quite gathered into something whole or shareable. 

Prompted by a dear friend, I’m returning to those old fragments with the clarity of a healing (and now fully feeling) brain. Much distance separates me from Uganda, and even more from the author of those original words. In piecing these bits together, I make no claim to offer complete or authoritative takes on places I’ve only briefly called home. What I can promise is an unfiltered, imperfect, and human view of how I see the world. Straight from my heart, in the hope of reaching yours. 

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At the bottom of my 2021 piece, I logged my “current address” as a single, neat entry: Kampala, UG. Looking back now, I know that was a lie.

I barely touched Kampala—a city spread across endless hills, home to nearly two million residents (which doubles on weekdays as commuters pour in for trade). I learned very quickly that Kampala redefines itself every few hundred meters. Multi-lane bypasses narrow into unpaved clay tracks, while high-walled diplomatic compounds perched on breezy ridges look straight down onto the ant-sprawl of people zig-zagging acrossopen-air markets, the hum of boda-boda stands, and the dense valley settlements below. Turn any corner, and you step into a micro-world with its own distinct rhythms, languages, and economies.

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