KaberaWrites

I AM I am Kabera – the one. I’m eighteen and I weigh 60 kilos/ 132.7 lbs. I never wear shirts without sleeves because I don’t like how flabby my arms are and when I go shopping I buy clothes three sizes larger because it makes me feel smaller. Being comfortable with my body image is a concept I have been trying to decipher for nearly half my life and as much as I’d like to blame my insecurities on society, I’ve come to realize that human reasoning faculties were never supposed to be relied on in the first place. I am Kabera Amahoro – the one who brings peace. It’s come to my attention that we seldom talk about mental health here in Uganda. I won’t claim to come from an extremely cultural background but strength is a huge part of African culture. This strength has nothing to do with what we have personally endured but rather the trials and tribulations of the thousands of great women and men that lived before us. In the eye of grand tragedies like decades of war, slavery and fam...

ASK YOUR GIRLFRIEND  THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF COVID-19 GLOBALLY AND LISTEN TO WHAT YOU ARE DATING. It’s a normal not so normal Sunday afternoon in quarantine and I’m scrolling through status updates of my friends and family when I come across the most amusing meme I have read so far; it says, ‘Ask your girlfriend the economic impact of Covid-19 and listen to what you are dating.’ Seldom; very seldom, does one find such a high level of skillfully applied satire and social criticism on social media these days however intended or unintended it may be. It is important to note that not everything is as it seems. Though the statement; I assume, was initially intended to mock the intelligence of the girlfriends in question, its authors have subconsciously questioned quite deeply the intention of human relationships in the world that we live in today. By simple logical deduction, this statement seems to imply that intelligence surpasses beauty in the world of love and courtship today. ...

ELIYA   The apartments I live in are maintained by an old man who we refer to as 'Mzee' to mean 'elder'. No one knows his real name or where he comes from. What we do know is that Mzee comes very early in the morning to weed the compound, sweep the dried leaves and occasionally  trim the grass.  Mzee has a young son of about five years named Elias but the locals around call him 'Eliya'. Eliya's mother is a mad woman named Rita who lives under the staircase and talks to herself all day. The gossips say Mzee bewitched her. This trio is no stranger to poverty and the harsh word economy that has no time to think about them. During the few years I have lived here, I have grown fond of  Eliya. Eliya having been raised in a in very different family is by all means a different child. Eliya wears a tattered red t-shirt under his dirty orange jumper and a pair of greenish-brown shorts. Sometimes he has shoes on and other times he doesn't. Eliya plays with t...