When was the last time you experienced love? Not a specific kind of love but just love. When was the last time you sat with yourself and could say you felt truly loved? I hope you take off a minute to think through and answer those questions. Over the years I’ve come to learn that there is a difference between being loved and knowing that you are loved.  Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend on what love looks like for us and the moments in which we felt most loved. We also talked about the importance in loving people how they want to be loved as opposed to how we want to be loved ..read more

These past days have been something for me as a person. I’ve mostly been exhausted. And yet as I watch the news coming in from Gaza I’m reminded of how even in my deepest exhaustion I’m so privileged.  photo credit @motaz_azaiza Instagram Privileged that as I get to watch a genocide unfold on live television, millions of people have experienced this for the past seventy five years. The helplessness, the pain, the anger, a cocktail of emotions right before our eyes. I also condole with families in Israel that lost loved ones following the October 7th attack. I was speaking to a friend ear ..read more

To be black  to be housed in this body of ancient calamity  a time ticking bomb  that explodes to break what is already broken  we live our lives just like we die alone, frustrated and longing they say hope is what kills and we hold onto her wings  to somehow sail past our own darkness  our own pain, this thing that lingers and stays and demands to be housed in bodies so frail To be black is to always be at war with self, with the world  with a system that would rather you were extinct  we break bone and back for capital  that only exists in dreams ..read more

They say when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. But what happens if it’s not your type of drink? What happens if you already have too much lemonade to drink? If I made lemonade for all the times grief creeped up on me, I’d have the world swimming in juice. Conversations around death and grief are always so triggering and yet over the past year I’ve found that it’s necessary for us to talk more about what happens to us when we lose people we love.  My first real encounter with loss came at a really young age, I lost a close  friend I had sat next to in class for two years. I ..read more

How do you greet people you haven’t spoken to in close to a year? My home bringing is tempting me to write a long happy new year message. The wise people on the clock app say “Delay is not Delilah” so happy new year!  I have missed you the way you miss a crush you have no business missing or an opportunity you didn’t apply for. Speaking of opportunities, this year has had me walk into room with the audacity of a white man. I like to call it the audacity of an elephant and the attitude of an antelope. By nature an elephant takes up space and never apologizes for it. One of my friends likes ..read more

If you are on Beyoncé’s internet you’ve definitely heard or seen the line “adulting is a scam.”  The transition from being a child to an adult always feels so sudden. For the longest time, most of us were protected from the realities that hit with adulting that when it happened we weren’t ready for what awaited us on the other side of the fence. All those quotes about age coming with wisdom, the freedom, the different things we saw adults do and hoped we’d finally get to do. If there was an option to swap places and stay a child for good I’d definitely opt for that but adulting is a fact ..read more

It’s been ages since I wrote on here. If I’m being truly honest I’d say I probably don’t remember how to even write like that anymore. In fact I thought twice before publishing this little post on this corner of the internet. I feel like the natural thing in a situation like ours would be to explain why the ghosting happened. Why I went away for over a year without even sending a pigeon. You know what the Gen Z say “if they really wanted to they would” but I’ll keep the details on this short and sweet in a future post. For now I’ll just focus on the topic at hand. As someone that is big on in ..read more

Hey there, Look at you, 12 months later. You are here today and now and I hope you are proud of yourself for that. The year might not have unfolded as you planned. You know how you order something and get something else when the package is delivered? You could even swear that this has been your worst year yet or a great contender for that award. Some days might have felt like life was testing your elastic limit. You were stretched in and out, bent to different shapes and taken through all kinds of flames. People love to say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but what are you to use ..read more

How to wake a butterfly is Loic Ekinga’s debut book and follows the author’s metamorphosis as he navigates life from childhood through to adulthood. Written during the lockdown, this poetry collection is deeply reflective and introspective – a story of becoming that explores loss, longing, family, masculinity, heartbreak and love among other themes. The book tells a beautiful tale of learning, unlearning and healing as the author evolves into himself. Life starts off as a difficult pregnancy and traumatic birth “It’s a boy/it’s a problem/it’s a screaming caterpillar/it won’t even look like it ..read more

Uganda’s health sector has been on the spot for a while now. The government proposed a budget cut to UGX 2.5 trillion, a huge reduction by UGX 258.29 billion (23.6%) for financial year 2021/2022 budget. This comes around the same time when countries are reinforcing their health care systems and building capacity in response to the pandemic. There is also the issue of vaccine accessibility to the target populations an area in which we are lagging behind. With less than 2% of the population vaccinated and a new COVID-19 wave, now is definitely not the time for Uganda to cut the health budget. In ..read more