Page 1: Beginnings,The Family Album.

One of my fondest memories growing up was watching my mother either set off on her travels or return from them. When she left, we children looked forward to the freedom that followed—roaming the village without curfews or the worry of being scolded for coming home late. When she returned, we waited eagerly for her stories, the scent of distant places lingering in her luggage and her laughter filling the house again. These moments were my first lessons in travel—its departures, its returns, and its power to shape imagination.

Mother preparing to leave for one of her journeys, dressed elegantly in her silk gomesi. Photograph taken in the early 1990s.

In this photograph above, I recently found in our family album, she is leaving again. Studying it closely, I realized it might have been my earliest encounter with a camera. My father often used one for his research projects, and my mother loved photography, taking pictures and later developing them in town. Judging from the height of the shot, the photographer must have been a small child, possibly me. That image, in hindsight, introduced me to the blend of the modern and the traditional, and perhaps marked the beginning of my own story with travel. Before Page 4, there was Page 1: our family album.

She was always elegant in her silk gomesi, fashionable yet grounded, and her days were filled with music, especially Elly Wamala’s Ebinyumu Ebyaffe, which played endlessly from her cassette player. Later, she moved it to the sitting room so her brother, my uncle, could enjoy his own collection whenever he visited. I remember him sitting by the player, rewinding tapes, exchanging music with her, and filling the house with song.

Uncle Kasozi was mixing music on our cassette player during one of his visits. Photograph taken in the early 1990s.

I grew up in a home of photographs, music, newspapers, and traveling parents. Today, I live surrounded by my own photographs, tea spices, antiques, and digital archives, continuing their rhythm of journeys and stories.