The madwoman advised me to walk

Every town has its fair share of mentally ill people roaming the streets so much so that after some time they become part of the local geography, like potholes and unfinished buildings. There are the quiet ones who walk around talking to invisible friends, while there are others who laugh alone under trees. 

My street has one very unpredictable madwoman who probably deserves her own district even. This particular woman has completely taken ownership of the road near my home. I do not mean legally, of course, but practically. She throws stones when she feel like it, pours water on people without warning, lights small fires in the middle of the road like she is conducting some kind of roadside ritual, and often places all manner of random things in the middle of the road.

To pass where she has camped one has to first assess the mood of the morning. Is she peaceful today? Is she angry? Please note, when she is angry she yells, throws insults and is violent. 

I am very afraid of her. Usually when I pass that stretch, I am running. I run fast enough to look like I know what I am doing, but also slow enough simply to survive, seeing I am not the fittest of people. 

On this particular day, however, I was walking, and that is how she noticed me. She looked at me and said, in Luganda, almost like an old neighbour who had been observing my habits for years:

"Eh, today you are walking."

I stopped.

"Wanji?" "I beg your pardon", I said.

She continued in rapid Luganda in such a way that could not be interrupted or questioned.

"Every day I see you running but today you are walking. That is good. When you run, things chase you. Dogs chase you. Ghosts chase you. People chase you. Bad things chase people who run. Walk. You can even fall down and break yourself."

I was in deep shock. What The....!! I froze in a moment where I do not know whether I was receiving madness, philosophy, or an early morning TED Talk from an unexpected speaker, so I simply nodded and said, “Okay... I will walk" because honestly, what is the correct counterargument to ghosts?

She continued walking beside me. My peace began to leave my body - that ghost that she was talking about. 

She had now entered a second speech, this time addressed partly to me, partly to herself, perhaps also partly to people only she could hear. She was saying something along the lines of refusing to go back to where she came from and that nobody would force her. That she had decided and that was final.

No. I did not engage her further. I did not ask where she came from, nor who was forcing her. I focused on walking. 

I increased my pace slightly.

She increased hers too.

I increased again.

She matched me exactly.

At that point, I began calculating all possible outcomes. If she suddenly throws a stone, do I duck or sprint? If she pulls out something sharp, do I scream? If she decides we are now exercise buddies for life, what is my long-term plan?

Meanwhile she kept talking, very calmly, as if we were two old friends out for an early morning walk.

Suddenly, without warning, she stopped, bent down, and began collecting sticks from the roadside, pulling leaves off those that had. 

That was my release. Phew

I continued walking alone, but now with fresh respect because in that situation, she had observed something correctly: I do run every day, particularly around her spot, and she had noticed. She had stored the information and had even surprisingly developed a theory around it. Maybe she observes more than people assume.

To be honest, one statement that she made got me thinking...

When you run, things chase you.... A wild sentence but when you think about it, it is not entirely wrong. 

From where my feet are, advice comes from the least expected places. It may appear barefoot, carrying sticks, capable of throwing stones, smelly and waring you of ghosts. You just have to be paying attention. Out of the mouths of babes madwomen... 

I will never drink alcohol again

I will never drink alcohol again. I wrote this in a WhatsApp group with the same seriousness of writing a will.

No jokes! I was dead serious and wrote it with the conviction of a person who had reached the edge of untold suffering and come back wiser. 

This was after two nights of drinking more than usual without much care or respect for tomorrow. Fun, happy times

The first night ended when the cock crowed and almost as if on cue, the Muslim call to prayer started. That alone should tell you the evening had blended seamlessly into morning. When the mosque is calling people to begin the day and you are still deciding whether to drink water, remove your shoes, or just collapse as you are, that should be a moment of personal reflection. I remember thinking, Peace, enough. Morning has found you still here.

So I went to bed.

I surprised myself by waking up just on time for a 9am online meeting, but of course I washed my face in ice water and slapped on some lipstick. That day my body dealt with me seriously in suffering. I spent the rest of the day weak, trying not to throw up, promising myself that I would be good to my body.

The following day, you will not believe it, I was drinking again. I met friends of friends, and it was the case where the plan was to have one glass of wine, a sip at a time. Not before long, there were empty bottles of wine. At least unlike before by the time the clock struck midnight, I was safely at home and in bed. 

The next morning I was up before seven, did my walk, ran errands, even drove from Entebbe to Kampala and back, looking like a woman whose life was under control.

But the body was simply waiting for afternoon, and that is when everything collapsed.

Strangely, I did not have a headache. Just terrible nausea and weakness. I had a trip planned and had to postpone it because there was no way I was going anywhere. I remember seeing people moving normally and wondering how they were doing it. How was everyone functioning as if life was ordinary?

That was the moment I went to a friends' WhatsApp group and wrote: I will never drink alcohol again.

I wrote it many times, like someone writing lines in school punishment.

My friends laughed immediately.

They laughed not because they are bad people, but because apparently this statement has history. Instead of sympathy, they started sending screenshots of older messages where I had said the exact same thing. Same words, same energy, same suffering. It turns out I have made this announcement before, several times, each time sounding like a new woman entering her season.

One of the friends I had been out with came over later that day looking like he had had it just as badly as I. He sat on the couch and within minutes he was asleep, passed out.

When he woke up, we made a serious pact, a pinky promise.

Imagine, two adults, recovering from poor decisions, crossing little fingers promising not to drink alcohol for six weeks. At that moment it felt wise, necessary even. We had experienced enough suffering.

Day one was easy because my body still remembered everything. I drank water like medicine, took multivitamins to help with recovery as I had to work, and moved around gently, fully convinced sobriety was now my character.

Then the body recovered. That is when I realised that the body is a very unreliable witness.

By day two I was already less committed in spirit to the pinky promise.

By day three I was checking dates. End of May? That is not nearby. That is many sunsets. It is even longer than Lent, and at least Lent comes with group encouragement and structure.

By day four I texted my friend because I was hoping maybe suffering had exaggerated things.

I asked, Please confirm, did we say end of April or end of May?

He replied immediately: End of May. We said end of May. We are making it.

That reply disturbed me a little because I was no longer speaking from nausea. I was speaking from recovery. Having recovered my mind was saying things like, Surely one glass cannot destroy a promise. Recovery become my lawyer, my judge, my catalyst, my influencer, my therapist, etc.

And that is what interested me, how quickly conviction changes once pain heals.

When I made that decision not to drink alcohol for 6 weeks, I meant it completely. In that moment alcohol was the enemy. But once the body became strong again, once appetite returned, once tea started tasting normal and the world stopped spinning, I began wondering whether I had made a serious decision in temporary suffering.

Yet the reason I made it had not changed, only the feeling had changed.

That happens in many parts of life. People sell land when pressure is high, then later when things have settled, they wonder not only why they sold it, but why they sold it so cheaply. People resign in anger, then reread the message the next day with calmer blood. People decide things when pain is still speaking loudly, then start trying to reverse decisions or make amends when peace returns.

Here I am sitting with my own decision, held together by one pinky promise.

What is most troubling for me is that I am travelling soon and I anticipate being served beautiful multi-coloured and harmless looking drinks with names that sound expensive enough to count as cultural immersion. I already know there will be that moment, somewhere beautiful, where somebody places a fancy cocktail nearby and I remember that my hungover self entered an agreement without consideration of future enjoyment.

Still, a promise is a promise.

It could be that the real test of many such decisions is whether you still respect them after the suffering that created them has gone.

So yes for now, I have gone ten days without a drink and please this is not because I am disciplined but because from where my feet were, two friends tied pinky fingers while suffering from poor choices, and now, having recovered, it is about honouring that pact.

10 reasons I haven't written in two weeks

For those who checked in, asked where I disappeared to, or wondered about my early retirement from blogging, thank you. I am here, alive and well, and still remember the password to my laptop.

The truth is, I have not written in two weeks, and because a simple explanation would be too ordinary and very unlike me, here are the actual reasons, listed honestly, dishonestly, and somewhere in between.

1. Global politics became another thing. Every time I opened my laptop to write, I would read fresh news. One minute war, the next minute elections, next minute speeches, headlines falling like rain. At some point I felt rude writing about ordinary life when the world was on a roll.

2. Donald Trump nearly getting shot, and Sebastian Sawe's sub 2-hour run somehow interrupted my concentration. You cannot sit calmly and write about potholes or morning jogs when international news is streaming in on all angles about all sorts of things. Eish, my thoughts scattered.

3. Work decided I should earn my salary. I experienced days where I would open one document, then another, then another, then workshops and by the evenings my brain would have fried or reached full capacity and switched off. 

4. Thoughts and ideas did come to mind as usual, but always at inconvenient times. Excellent opening paragraphs came while driving. Strong endings came while bathing. Sharp observations came while talking to someone important. By the time I sat down, the ideas had packed their bags and evaporated. I hope they found their way to someone else's mind - someone who was paying more attention.

5. The clock has been misbehaving. I do not know if it is just me, but time has become shorter lately. I  cannot prove it scientifically, but I am convinced somebody somewhere adjusted the hours and forgot to notify the rest of us.

6. Travel confused my time. The days felt shorter, the mornings too early, the evenings too quick. Although physically present, my sense of time was off.

7. Fatigue fatigue fatigue. At the end of each day, I was so tired I would stare at a sentence, write and rewrite it, and then decide sleeping is also an acceptable literary decision.

8. Some thoughts and ideas simply refused to become paragraphs. Life gave me material - lots of things to write about, but it just sat there like raw cassava, valuable, but not yet ready for serving.

9. I considered that silence might make me look mysterious. Hahaha was this a dangerous idea? Two days of silence feels mysterious, day three felt artistic, but two weeks started inviting concern, it was no longer the demand/supply dynamics. 

10. I missed writing, but I also wanted to miss it enough to return full swing I have since experienced that writing every day feels like duty, and sometimes leaving it alone for a moment lets it call you back, like an old friend asking where you disappeared to.

Anyway, enough excuses, I am back.

The stories did not stop, and life certainly did not slow down. If anything, my notebook is now crowded and my mind is full.

To everyone who checked in, thank you. That small kindness matters more than you know. 

My feet are moving again, so the writing must follow.

A river, an old song and moments that became memories

It was around 2am or 3am  in the morning, I can not quite recall. 

We were seated on the banks of the River Nile, a small circle of people; colleagues, friends and almost-friends under the stars, with music playing into the night. There were five countries represented in that circle, and even those from the same country came from opposite ends of it, different accents, different memories, different histories.

At that hour of the night, there wasn't that much seemed important. No one was talking about work. We were simply there, sharing a night, sharing wine, sharing music, sharing an easy closeness forming among people who may or may never sit together in exactly the same way again.

The playlist kept drifting backward, one familiar song after another. Yes, you know those songs that carry the weight of so many years and memories inside in them making people smile before the chorus even begins.

Hotel California by Eagles came on. Almost everyone knew it.

The singing became louder, increasingly more carefree, each person entering in where they remembered the words best, some confidently correct, others confidently wrong. Then there was that line that made me pause...

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.

One of the ladies sung that particular line quite loudly that the line stood out as if it had separated itself from the song.

Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.

That statement became larger than the music itself, and it actually felt true in that moment.

A song can return you somewhere without warning. To a school corridor, a wedding, a heartbreak, bus journey, to a person you no longer speak to or a version of yourself you had almost forgotten existed.

There are times when people dance because they want that return. They want, for three or four minutes, to meet an older version of life, and touch something that once felt simple or alive. A song can open a small door and for a moment you step through it willingly.

Other times people dance for the opposite reason, to forget by leaving certain thoughts outside the moment. They dance to let the body carry what the mind has been carrying all day. They dance to stop worrying about tomorrow and stop answering imagined questions. Sometimes I dance to silence worry, nudges from unfinished work, loneliness, uncertainty, all of it.

No, I do not dance to forget forever, but just until the song ends, because the music does not remove life, but only interrupts it. The speakers will eventually go quiet. Someone checks the time. Someone remembers the morning ahead. Someone mentions the long drive back, the early meeting, the message they forgot to answer, the thing waiting for them beyond the night, and life resumes almost immediately.

Could this be exactly why these moments matter? For a short while, people stand fully where their feet are, without being dragged backward or forward too much. One smiling at memories, another deep in their private thoughts, another singing loudly, almost theatrically, another just listening. All that in my opinion could be a kind of dancing too, even without moving, and in a way saying, "for this moment, I am here."

That night by the Nile, under the stars, with five countries gathered in one small circle, old songs seemed to flatten distance not between countries, but distance between years, between who people had been and who they were now. 

That night was not just about music. It was about something else that is harder to explain. You realise that knowing someone is not always about time, but sometimes it is about moments. You can know a person for years and still not know them like that. On the other hand, you can meet someone one evening, sit by a river, share music, share silence, share badly sung lyrics, and leave knowing something real about them.

That night, I met a constellation from the East properly, through their presence, laughter, the stories they told, the memories they shared, and most importantly for me was the unspoken understanding that, for that moment, that was enough. I say a constellation because they are not just one bright point, but made of remarkable parts carrying patterns, meaning, and depth, where people can look at them more than once and still discover something new.

Some dance to remember what life once felt like. Some dance to forget what life has become. Most of us, I suspect, are doing both at once. There are times, without even realising it, where we dance to meet each other somewhere in between.

Communication does not always need the same language

 I watched two children playing.

One was mixed race, speaking really good English excitedly as they played, while the other was speaking Lusoga only, answering with equal speed, equal confidence, equal excitement.

What interested me was that neither seemed bothered by the fact that they were not speaking the same language in the same way.

One would say something in English, and the other would answer in Lusoga. Then both would laugh as if nothing unusual had happened. Indeed probably nothing unusual had happened, because somehow they understood each other perfectly, not word for word but  enough to continue the game, enough to keep the jokes alive, enough to chase each other, stop, argue briefly, return, and continue laughing.

It made me think that adults may be the ones who overestimate language and underestimate human instinct. We imagine understanding must always have words we already know or understand, but children often understand connection and intention before words, and can play just as easily.

One child points, the other runs. One protests, the other bargains or defends. One invents a rule, the other immediately breaks it, and somehow the game survives. No one paused to ask, "Which language shall we use?" and no one looked embarrassed and there was definitely no apology for not knowing enough. They were just two small people building a conversation from laughter, tone, gesture, speed, and trust.

And maybe that is how many things begin before adults complicate them. Could it be because later we become careful and proud? We separate ourselves by language, accent, by who sounds educated and who sounds local, economic circumstances, social class, colour.

Children do not seem troubled by any of that, they simply continue, one in English, one in Lusoga. with neither surrendering their language, and neither demanding the other abandon theirs, yet their games moved forward beautifully.

It felt, in a small way, like watching what coexistence actually looks like before we grow up and complicate things. I guess understanding has never depended entirely on speaking the same language but it depends on wanting to remain in the game.

From where my feet are, I wish to have that same child-like spirit.

I threw a stone at a car

The other morning I was running through the usual obstacle course that our roads now offer for free: potholes, puddles, loose gravel, and the occasional small private lakes that become part of the road in the wet season. 

I saw the car coming from a distance. The car was moving fast, bouncing through potholes without reducing speed, just hitting one after another as if that was normal. Then it reached the large one.

The splash was unbelievable.

Usually when a car splashes you, the water catches your legs, maybe below the knee. This time, the splash was so large it hit my whole side, reached my hair, landed on my face, and covered my glasses completely in mud. For a moment I could not even see properly. I was wearing bright colours, so unless someone was driving while thinking very deeply about life, I believe I could be seen.

I just stood there thinking, what exactly was that? Actually, I said it less politely than that.

What made it even stranger is that I already had a stone in my hand. A small smooth stone I had picked up while running, for no particular reason, and carried it absentmindedly for a while and then forget you are carrying.

Before I had properly processed what had happened, I threw it.

It hit the side mirror with a loud bang. It did not break anything, but it was loud enough for the car to stop.

The driver got out immediately, looking very annoyed, with the largest frown on his his face. He first checked the mirror. Then he turned to me and asked, why did you hit my car?

By then I was already walking toward him, wet, muddy, glasses stained, looking exactly like the answer to his question.

I just said, look at me. And to his credit, he did.

Something changed immediately. His face softened. He said he had not intended it. I am not sure whether he had seen me or not, because honestly I still think he had. 

He apologised and then offered to give me a ride to where I was going so I could change.

That was kind, but it was not something I was prepared to accept from a man whose car I had just hit with a stone. I declined and decided it was wiser to continue home exactly as I was.

I walked back, very muddy and slightly amused by the whole thing, but the strangest part is that the stone had not even been picked up for that purpose. It found its purpose in my hands. 

Please confirm in writing that you are you

Today, I went to apply for a visa.

Of course we have learnt over the years that for visa appointments, one must arrive at the office early, carrying a thick folder with  EVERYTHING.

Inside that folder was my life, in paper form.

• Invitation letter, check
• Passport, check
• National ID, check
• Birth certificate, check
• Copy of mother's ID, check
• Copy of father's ID, check
• Water bill, check
• Land title, check
• Police clearance, check
• Bank statements, check
• Letter from the bank confirming that the statements were genuine, check
• Letter from my employer confirming that I work where I say I work, check
• Employment contract, check
• Travel itinerary, check
• Hotel bookings, check

In short, I carried enough evidence to prove that I exist and live a purpose driven life in Uganda.

I handed everything over with the confidence of someone has experienced and respected bureaucracy enough to leave no gap. The officer looked through the documents carefully, turned a few pages, paused, then said:

"We also need a letter from you introducing yourself."

Wait. What?

A letter?

From me?

Introducing myself?

For a second, I thought I had misunderstood, because I was standing right there, directly in front of them, in full human form, not represented by a cousin with whom I share a name, face to face not through Zoom, and not even hiding behind dark glasses.

My passport had my face.
My national ID had my face.
Even the police clearance had looked at that same face and agreed that, yes, this face belongs to someone known to the Republic.

But apparently none of those had yet completed the final step, which was for me to now write and formally announce that I am indeed myself.

I remember thinking: what exactly was this letter expected to say?

Was I to begin:

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to confirm that I am the person currently sitting opposite you.

Or maybe:

Kindly note that despite the attached documents, I remain available in my physical form as further evidence.

No. I would take it serious and write the letter properly, because this ridiculous bureaucracy required serious imagination.

To whom it may concern,
I write to introduce myself as myself. I have been this person consistently for many years, with only minor adjustments in size, handwriting, and political opinions. Attached kindly find supporting documents from various government institutions who have also reached the same conclusion.

I would follow this with another paragraph:

My National ID confirms my identity. My passport confirms my face. My bank confirms my account. My employer confirms my labour. The police confirm my relative peacefulness. I now add my own confirmation in case all previous witnesses, including my physical presence, require reinforcement.

What made it even funnier was how normal this all seemed. No one laughed. The visa officer did not lean over and say, "yes, we know this sounds strange but it is what it is."

It was simply the next item on the list.

This is the fascinating thing about systems. Once something enters a checklist, it immediately gains authority far beyond common sense. It no longer matters that you are present, identifiable, documented, and answering questions in real time. If Box Seven requires a letter, then Box Seven must receive its letter.

So yes, I wrote the letter. I wrote it because I needed the visa and I am an adult.

From where my feet are, the system taught me an important lesson that sometimes being yourself is not enough, you must submit yourself in writing.

New Beginnings

I have learnt that not every ending happens in one single moment. There are times when you end something many times before it actually and truly ends.

You return to the same conclusion more than once. You leave, then question yourself, return, then remember why you left. You tell yourself this is the last time, then fear, hope, habit, or uncertainty pull you back, and the cycle continues. 

Yesterday felt different because this time I was not just reacting to pain, but was responding to clarity. I let go of something that had been holding me back for a while. It was something I had tried to release before but had not fully found the courage to put down. I let go of what had become too heavy to keep explaining, too uncertain to keep trusting, too limiting to keep calling part of my future.

For a long time, fear disguised itself as patience and giving grace. I waited, adjusted, hoped, developed interesting coping strategies, had several internal conversations with myself until I realised that courage is deciding that holding on is more painful and more costly than letting go.

So today I am full of gratitude. Gratitude for clarity. Gratitude for the strength to release what was no longer working for me. Gratitude for the faith to step forward without knowing everything ahead. Gratitude for a new beginning.

I do not think all new beginnings are easy, but I know there is something freeing about finally moving in the direction your spirit has been asking for all along.

Today, where my feet are, I am thankful for a beginning.

The commercial future of the moon

We used to look at the moon with humility and wonder. Back then, it used to belong to poetry, lullabies, lovers who had run out of words and wanted to make promises they could not measure, to children hearing about the man in the moon, or somebody somewhere saying I will love you to the moon and back.

Here we are today, human beings confidently circling back with better rockets and more acute corporate instincts, it feels inevitable that somewhere a presentation already exists for Moonlight Heights Residences, phase one nearly sold out, with crater-facing balconies, eternity pools with the view of earth, and for the daring, dark-side facing estates. I am certain there is an early investor discount.

Soon there will be Premium Lunar Weddings, complete with silver themed decor and vows exchanged under the original moon while standing on it. Honeymoon packages too: three nights, four days, complimentary oxygen, breakfast excluded because of gravity logistics.

Then the Moon Ultra Marathon will come, advertised as the world’s lightest race. 

Motivational speakers will book lunar retreats called Rise Above Earthly Limits, where exhausted executives pay to rediscover themselves while floating near the sea of tranquility. 

Alibaba will have lunar flash sales, early bird tickets, group discounts, corporate team-building in low gravity.

A few years later, FIFA will create something called the Peace Cup Lunar Edition, sponsored by three telecom companies and one bank, with commentators pretending that low gravity has added beauty to the game when in fact nobody can control the ball.

Uganda being Uganda, I am sure conversations have begun about who should become Member of Parliament for Lunar Affairs, or at the very least Minister of State for Moon Affairs, complete with an official vehicle, a fuel allocation, and a speech about taking services closer to the people. This will be followed shortly by a parliamentary committee, two benchmarking trips, and a public debate about whether the moon belongs under research, defence, or local government.

Human beings being human beings, we cannot go anywhere without immediately inventing classes. There will be economy, business class, premium orbit, and executive lunar access, where rich people pay extra to look reflective near a window while everybody else settles for videos.

We have already commercialised beaches, mountains, silence, fasting, prayer, weddings, funerals, sunsets, childhood, wellness, heartbreak, and even the act of doing nothing, which is now packaged as a retreat with herbal tea and registration fees. It was optimistic to think the moon would survive us. For centuries it hung there quietly, lighting poets, fishermen, night travellers, insomniacs, and people making decisions they should probably have delayed until morning.

At some point in the future, a child will ask what the moon used to be before, and an adult probably comparing package options and asking whether luggage is included will say, once upon a time, it was just there.

The value chain of life - birth, prayer, tea, coffins

Today I drove past a referral hospital and noticed something I had probably seen before, but had never really stopped to think about.

Right outside the hospital gate was a police station.

A few steps away, there was a small shop selling baby clothes, dolls, flowers, and those soft things people buy when a baby is born, or when they are visiting someone and want to carry something to cheer them up.

Next to it were several stands selling coffins of all sizes, and wreaths.

A little further on were food stalls, drinks, tea, snacks, chapati, water, all arranged for people who were waiting for news, medicine, visiting hours, discharge, doctors, waiting for life to begin or to hear whether a life will continue.

Across the road were ambulances parked beside breakdown trucks, hearse services, and funeral service offices.

Right there and then, it felt as though an entire philosophy of existence had been arranged along one stretch of road in Kampala.

It got me thinking... a hospital does not stand alone. All around it, a hospital gathers and creates an economy built around the fact that human life is fragile, unpredictable, and always moving between arrival and departure.

Where people are born, someone sells baby blankets. Where people are admitted, someone sells food to relatives who will sit through the night on plastic chairs or mats on the floor.  When accidents happen, ambulances wait. Where there is uncertainty, police stations are ready to serve because crisis brings with it paperwork, reports, conflict, stamps, etc. And where death is possible, coffins aren't far.

Nearby looking natural amongst all this stood a church. Why? Because when human beings run out of explanation, a church remains nearby, and also medicine does not remove the need for prayer. 

Nothing on that road felt accidental.

It was almost as if the road itself was built to understand and hold the thought that life is not one event, but is a chain of several events. One moment creates demand for the next. Birth opens one kind of commerce. Illness opens another. Recovery has its own economy. Grief too has suppliers, transport, flowers, fabric,  tents, chairs, and other logistics

As I drove along Mulago road, it was interesting to see life through infrastructure. We often speak of life in emotional language, and rightly so, because life is deeply emotional. But on that road, life looked operational.

A child is born, and somewhere nearby someone is already selling what is required. A patient deteriorates, and another part of the system prepares.

A family receives good news, another receives bad news, and outside the same gate, both may stop at neighbouring shops, one buys flowers and balloons, another asks for coffin prices, both transactions happening within meters of each other.

It felt unsettling at first, almost harsh, until I realised that this is how honest life gets. I realised that a hospital and surrounding areas are the few places where life is what it is, because in most places we separate these things. We keep beginnings away from endings and package joy and grief in different corners of the mind. But here they sit next to each other and it has always been an ecosystem - an entire value chain.

From where my feet are, I noticed that everything has always lived together and that one road explained more about the life than a hundred speeches ever could.

What Okwepena (dodgeball) taught me about life

This evening as I was walking, I passed a group of girls returning home from school. Instead of heading straight home, they had stopped on a patch of grass in someone’s compound and turned it into a playground.

The girls were playing kwepena - dodgeball.  Two girls stood at either end. The rest were in the middle. The mission was simple: aim, throw, eliminate. In the middle, the goal was survival... dodge or go home.

They were laughing loudly, having such a good time, I remembered my own days playing kwepena. I was never good at it. 

The different styles of dodging were almost an art form. Sometimes we would go low, almost folding ourselves in half. Other times we jumped with such dramatic flair, legs wide, skirts flying. Some preferred the side-step which was a subtle, economical, like you barely moved but somehow escaped. The best players were not necessarily the fastest. They were observant and watched the thrower’s hands, the direction of the eyes (I remember kalisoliso), even the slight shift in weight before the ball left the hand. 

It was not just about speed. It was about reading the moment. Anticipation was everything.

I stood there a while, watching those girls with nostalgia and had to pull myself away from them to finish my walk. It was then that I realised dodgeball is such an accurate metaphor for life.

Life stations itself at both ends and starts throwing.

There are some things that we see coming, like the exam you didn’t prepare for, the deadline you ignored, the tension building in a relationship. You can spot the arm lifting, and then prepare your jump, or bend your knees. Those are the balls that you have a fair chance of dodging.

Then there are the unexpected throws. The ones that come from your blind side. Illness, loss, disappointment, betrayal. The ball leaves someone’s hand before you even know they were aiming at you. Those are harder and sometimes they hit.

In the game, once the ball hits you, you are out. In life, being "hit" doesn’t always mean you are out. It could just mean you have been shaken, you fall, sit out for a while, you reassess, and step back into another round.

What struck me most watching those girls was not just how fast they moved, but how they kept moving even when they were tired. The throwers did not slow down out of mercy. The balls kept coming, sometimes in quick succession. The girls determined to stay in the game kept adjusting. Duck. Jump. Side-step. Laugh. Reset. Repeat.

Life does not pause because you are exhausted. I asked myself, how do you keep dodging when you are tired?

I suppose dodging in adulthood is not so much about big leaps and more about small, consistent shifts. Could it also be about changing direction? Or about saying no earlier? Maybe preparing better? Watching patterns? Learning the rhythm of the throwers in your life like the habits, the triggers, the cycles?

In life, like kwepena, one needs to know not to stand in the most exposed spot. Among the school kids, the winner was the girl who stayed in the middle the longest. She may not have necessarily been the fastest, but the one who endured.

There is something humbling about that.

We spend so much of life trying to control the throwers, to negotiate or plead with the ones at the ends, whereas we should be strengthening our own reflexes, building awareness. We need to accept that the balls will keep coming, and some we will dodge beautifully, others will brush our sleeves, and some will knock us flat.

From where my feet are, that was the lesson... to stay light on your feet, watch closely, move wisely, laugh when you can, and when you get hit, do not assume it is the end of the story.

Sometimes it's just the end of that round.

What does it mean when people say you have changed?

I bumped into someone recently that I had not seen in a very long time, could have been 25 years, or a little more. In that moment that we met, there was brief hesitation of trying to place each other, trying to fit old faces onto present ones, trying to remember a name and calculate how many years had passed in between.

Then came the usual pleasantries, the laughter, hahahahah, the surprise, the quick catching up, and then, almost naturally, came the sentence: You have changed.

It was followed by another one, as though one was explaining the other: You are different.

I smiled because there was nothing really to argue with there. Of course I have changed. In truth, I think I would worry if after all these years, after all the years, I was still exactly who I was when we last met. 

The comment kept nagging me. It did not offended me, but I kept wondering what exactly people mean when they say someone has changed. Do they mean the face is older or the voice has a different tone? 

Later that day, that thought returned in an unexpected way. A butterfly passed by and for reasons I cannot fully explain, my mind went backwards, to what came before the butterfly.

Before the butterfly there was an egg, then a caterpillar, then a chrysalis.

Is this not how life works? We often speak of change as though becoming different means leaving behind what came before, as though the earlier version of ourselves no longer belongs to us. Yet nature suggests that transformation does not erase earlier stages.

The egg is important because this is where the lifecycle begins (do not get started on the chicken vs. the egg). It is small, rarely noticed, fragile even, but full of possibility. It does not yet explain what it will become, and perhaps that is part of its beauty. Not everything at the beginning needs to declare its journey.

Then comes the caterpillar, and this is a very different stage altogether. It spells constant movement, appetite, gathering, taking in what is needed for growth. It is not elegant in the way people admire elegance, but it has its purpose. It eats because growth at this stage demands it to eat. It moves close to the ground because that is where a caterpillar belongs.

It could be that many parts of our own lives are like that too. There are seasons where we are simply gathering, learning, trying, absorbing, making mistakes, saying too much, believing too quickly, growing in ways that may not look beautiful from the outside but are necessary all the same.

Then comes the chrysalis, which may be the most misunderstood stage of all because from the outside it looks like very little is happening,  yet inside, everything is happening. Structures are changing significantly.

I think many human seasons are like that too. There are years when outwardly nothing seems to change, yet internally almost everything is being rearranged. Responsibility changes how one thinks, loss changes how one listens, love softens some hearts and strengthens others, etc.

Those seasons are not always visible to the people around us. They simply notice later that something has changed, that the person they knew now speaks differently, chooses differently, responds differently to the world.

I guess that is why being told you have changed should not always sound like accusation but simply an acknowledgement that life has been happening, because if nothing changes, then nothing chages.

At the same time, change should not be confused with denial. I do not think becoming different means rejecting who one once was. I do not feel separate from earlier versions of myself. If anything, I feel more aware that they all still belong here.

The person from many years ago was real. The uncertainty, the confidence, the unfinished thinking, the earlier laughter, all of it belonged to its season. Those were not false versions but were earlier stages.

The egg still belongs to me.

The caterpillar belongs to me too.

Even the quieter seasons, the uncertain seasons, the seasons when life seemed hidden and difficult to explain, those too are part of the same story, because I do not think a  butterfly apologises for no longer crawling,  but neither does it deny that crawling once mattered.

I think we struggle because memory or encounters often freeze people in one stage. Someone remembers your laughter but has not seen what shaped your silence later. Someone remembers your confidence but not what taught you. Someone remembers your beginning and unconsciously expects it to remain exactly as they left it.

But none of us are only our beginnings.

Even in a garden, people admire the butterfly and forget how many forms came before it. Nobody stops to praise the egg. Few people admire the appetite of the caterpillar. The chrysalis looks almost forgettable, and yet without those less visible stages, there can be no butterfly.

From where my feet are, I think that not everyone who remembers you has met who you became, and not everyone who meets you now can fully understand how many stages had to pass for the current version of you.

The butterfly does not resemble its past, but its past is still there behind its beautiful colours.

Is a folded note bribery or appreciation?

So, I went to a government office the other day needing a service.

It was one of those errands that require you to carry an A4 brown envelope or a plastic folder of documents, photocopies, passport photos, and certainly questions about about if this can be escaped, even when you know fully well it cannot. In our part of the world, you do not go to a government office armed only with papers. You also carry expectation management because anything could happen. 

Experience has taught many of us that there are usually two queues. The official queue, which moves according to the laws of bureaucracy, and the unofficial one, which moves according to eye contact, whispers, and folded notes that disappear into handshakes.

So before I even arrived, I had already begun the usual internal meeting with myself...

Should I prepare kitu kidogo something small?

No, not a bribe, of course. Nobody ever calls it that in the planning stage. It is usually called something more agreeable. Transport. Tea. Water. Facilitation. Lunch. Really it is just so things move. And we know that the language around these things is always very polite, as if to protect ones conscience and morality.

I had almost agreed with myself that perhaps carrying something small was simply understanding how systems work. A practical person must survive the practical world.

But as luck arranged it, I reached there with no extra cash in my pocket, except the Ugx 5000 for my taxi back home. So the decision was made for me.

I entered empty-handed, and prepared mentally for delay.

But then something unusual happened.

I was welcomed kindly. Someone at the gate directed me clearly. Inside, another person explained where to go next without irritation. At the next desk, my papers were examined carefully. Questions were asked and answered with patience. One officer even left their chair to show me which office I needed next.

I kept waiting for the difficult part. The hidden resistance or the sigh, or the long pause that usually means you are expected to understand something without it being said.

But none came. Instead, each person I met was helpful in a way that almost made me suspicious.

At one point I even wondered whether I had accidentally entered a private office by mistake and would later discover I was in the wrong building. But no, this was the correct office. Correct gate, correct stamp, correct forms, and somehow, also correct human beings.

By the time everything was done, I had received the service I came for, and received it well.

Then, as I reached into my pocket again, I found money. Good for you Peace. But another internal meeting began.

Now what? Should I give it?

If I had given this before, it would have been bribing.

But now?

Now the service was already complete. The forms were signed and the process had moved. Nobody had delayed me, hinted or negotiated.

So if money leaves my hand now, what exactly is it becoming?

A bribe cannot influence what has already happened.

Can gratitude be folded in a note? Can appreciation wear the same clothes as bribery but mean something different? How does a system know the difference?

That is where the matter becomes complicated. The same note passed before service says, Please help me. The same note passed after service says, Thank you for helping me.

It is the same currency being given by the same hand at a different timing, and as such a different moral tone. One is trying to bend the system. The other is trying to acknowledge the human being who behaved well inside a system that often teaches people not to bother.

This is perhaps why I dwelt on this moment, because when good service feels surprising, it says something different and uncomfortable about what we have come to expect. It means patience has become unusual enough to deserve reward. Courtesy has become memorable enough to provoke gratitude.

A person simply doing their job well now feels like someone has gone beyond duty, and that in and of itself is worth reflecting on.

In the end, I gave the money, not because I needed anything more, nor because another door remained closed. I gave it because they had been kind, patient, and decent through the whole process.

As I walked away, I kept asking myself whether I had appreciated good service or participated in the same bribery culture under a different title.

Sometimes systems do not only confuse procedure, but also confuse language. This is probably why in many offices, the line between bribery and appreciation is not drawn by money, but by the silence in which it is given.

From where my feet are, timing appeared to carry moral weight in my eyes. A note before service changes behaviour. A note after service changes interpretation. Somewhere between the two sits the ordinary citizen, holding gratitude in one hand and ethical uncertainty in the other.

The lamest excuse ever

Some people are unreliable (me inclusive).

Then there are those who are remarkably reliable in one specific way: their unreliability never fails. They are reliable in being unreliable.  You can count on it. If a plan is made, you immediately begin making room for delay, adjustment, reinterpretation, excuses and the possibility that time, for them, is only a very loose suggestion, subject to interpretation.

I have a friend belongs firmly to that second category.

If we agree on 10:00, 10:00 is not really the time. It is simply the zero or first draft of the day. A tentative arrangement that will later be adjusted depending on unfinished errands, distracted conversations, misplaced priorities, and whatever else decides to join him before he joins the plan.

So when we had agreed to go somewhere and he delayed, I was not exactly surprised. I have enough history with this pattern to know when waiting stops being a sensible thing to do and it becomes necessary for me to move ahead, and so I started off without my friend.

I reached the destination safely and after a couple of hours of silence, I asked where he was. His answer was calm and confident...

"I am waiting out the rain."

I looked up.

The sky above me was so clear it almost felt like it was the deepest blue ever to emphasise how clear it was. Blue in every direction. Very very bright sunshine with  not a single cloud to offer any sort of support to his statement.

It was really such a beautiful day that even the excuse itself was embarrassed to be an excuse.

So naturally I looked again, just to be fair. Just for reasonable doubt. 

Still nothing. If anything, it felt hotter than before.

Then I remembered he was in Kampala, I was in Entebbe.

And apparently, because it was raining where he was, he had concluded that it must therefore be raining where I was too. Kampala receives rain, therefore Entebbe must be under similar sky management.

What surprised me most was not even the excuse itself, but who it came from.

This is someone who is genuinely intelligent. Very intelligent, in fact, and not modest about it either. He writes, thinks deeply, takes pride in being intellectually sharp, and often presents himself with the confidence of someone whose conclusions are unbreakable.

Which is why I found it quite astonishing that such a mind could build such a weak bridge between two places and call it logic. That because rain was falling in one location, another location must automatically be experiencing the same weather.

Mind you, this was all without calling to check in with the person at the destination.

At some point it became less about weather and more about the truth that he was where he wanted to be, and the excuse given was only because I asked and he needed to say something, because had he really been trying to come, surely curiosity alone would have asked one question:

"Is it raining there?"

But no.

The weather had already been decided on my behalf. And just like that, the excuse entered the hall of classics. Right next to:

• The dog ate my homework.
• I was just about to call you.
• My battery died.
• I did not see your message.
• Traffic was terrible.
• I forgot my phone.
• I slept off accidentally.
• Someone came just as I was leaving.
• I thought today was tomorrow.
• I am nearby, when nearby means still at home considering whether to bathe.

And of course, the modern masterpiece:

• "I am on my way."

A phrase that can mean anything from getting out of bed, entering the gate to still searching for socks.

Excuses are fascinating because they do not necessary reveal what happened but are more about how quickly a person can build a story that sounds adequate enough to go through the moment.

Some excuses at least attempt realism, while others already negate basic facts. This particular one carried rain into sunshine, and perhaps that is why it still stands out to me. And no, this is not because people delay. Yes, people delay all the time. But because now and then an excuse appears so fragile that even the sky will refuse to be innocently dragged in.

And honestly, the sky was a witness.

From where my feet are, some excuses do not need to be analysed. They implode and collapse the moment the are mentioned.