travel

The ruinous nature of holidays

It’s not often you find yourself leaving home with the perfect companion. This is especially true when travelling.

The pressure to have a good time can sap you of the joy that you end up wearing as a mask to hide the strain. So I was pleased to recently find myself on a trip to Cyprus with Geoff Dyer.

As a fellow “professional of distraction”, he did for me what I, at the time, couldn’t bring myself to do, out of lethargy and a sense of existential displacement. That is to articulate the sense of disaffection and fatigue with both the interior and exterior landscape.

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My story: Recalling the journeys of the Ugandan Asian Diaspora

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If days are where we live our lives then stories are where we remember them.  Whether fact or fiction, the telling of tales is one of the most compelling ways to chart journeys and worlds discovered by people Other than ourselves. As children, we relish fairy tales that introduce us to the concept of morality and allow us to invest hope and expectation in imaginary people and their adventures. 

Geography is history: Going back to the start

Uganda, the peal of Africa and where the Ugandan Asian Diaspora story all began.  But as I go back to the start, it isn't only the tales of oppression and brutality associated with Uganda of the 1970s that I think of, but the expectation of finding answers to some long-held questions about the country as it once was, and as it is now.

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Human rights, human wrongs: Who cares?

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I recently returned from a trip to Geneva, the human rights headquarters of the world, you might say.  Only what struck me from the people I met, the stories I heard and the places I visited was not the undeniable force of activism and political will that characterises the city, but the sad sense that for the people it represents, the human rights movement is losing its grip.