For an exclusive W5 documentary to air this fall, CTV News National Affairs Correspondent Omar Sachedina reflects on travelling to Uganda with his mother for the first time since she was exiled when Ugandan Asians were expelled in 1972.
We didn't have an address or even the faintest clue if the house my mother grew up in would still be there, but we were determined to find it, to return to a place that might strike a core memory by seeing familiarity in the branches of a tree or the sweet smell of mangoes in her small Ugandan village.
I not only benefited from a cross-cultural mix of cuisine -- kadhi and khichdi were as common in my house as matoke -- but also language. The particular Indian dialects I grew up speaking, Kutchi and Gujarathi, also had Ugandan words and phrases mixed in. A unique hybrid. Half a century later, my mother, the young woman who left as a teenager, returned. This time with her two children, my sister and I, beside her. We'd talked about making the trip when my dad was still alive, but unlike my mom, he had little desire to return -- too many difficult memories.
We set out for Nabusanke -- my mom's village -- shortly before sunrise, relying almost exclusively on the landmarks etched in my mother's memory and our local driver. The journey is about 80 kilometres, but because of the dirt roads, potholes, traffic and boda bodas it's a trip that took well over an hour.