Rebel in a Bubble

Last year in February, my partner, his brother and I went home for a weekend of rest and family love. We found that my sister's dog had had puppies, and they looked so cute all huddled up together. She said we could have one. I had never had a dog my entire life, my sister has had all the pets at home. When we were leaving after the blissful weekend, we decided to choose and take one puppy. There was one brown one that kept circling around my feet, rubbing his belly on my foot. We decided on that one. Our journey was long, stopping in Bushenyi and then moving on to Kampala. We had carried some milk for the puppy but still this was his first time to not be next to his mother and to travel anywhere. But he was a resilient little fella. He madeit  home alive. Mom kept asking about him and we were just super excited to care for another life. Our whole routine changed. After soliciting for names on facebook and elsewhere and not really liking any, we decided to name him Ngyendo, whi...

So most of March I was thinking about my grandmother Nyamwire, my dad's mom. Considering she's been dead for a long time, some of my uncles freaked out when I told them she was visiting me in my dreams. I was told to go and pray, blah, blah, blah. To which I replied that I'm trying to decolonise my mind and to stop listening to the demonising of everything traditionally African. Before colonialists arrived, I told them, our religion depended highly on contact with the dead. One of my uncles was so shocked by all this that he just changed the subject. But a cousin of mine was very intrigued and she told me to keep listening and see if maybe grandma had a message for us. A week later I went on a writing retreat in Lira and embarked on my first feature film. There is a character in the story who's the backbone of the protagonist and a symbol of love and protection. I was struggling so much with her back story because she's a Munyankore woman who lives in Buganda. I di...