I sat by the window. Drawing the curtains slightly, I caught the final glimpses of our town as the bus snaked around the station before landing on the highway.

The STC station was a collection of nim trees with a shed under which tickets were sold, where passengers and visitors could sit. Behind the shed was a building resembling a warehouse where the buses were sent for maintenance and repairs. At the entrance of the station was a local food joint popularly known as “chop bar”.

The tiny space between the bus station and the highway was a line of snack bars; a carpentry shop was at the end of the line and in the middle, defunct telephone booths where we used to go with cards to make phone calls.

We were on our way to the capital city at last! Despite the insurmountable obstacles. What a miracle that we escaped from their claws and jaws! God is indeed good as they say.

The journey was a strangely delicious adventure. As we passed by a shop from which we used to rent movies, I couldn’t help but compare how things filed pass us to a fast-forwarded movie. Yet, I made out the images that floated pass us: Fountain Gate Chapel, opposite, the VAG Hall, behind it, the regional police headquarters. Further down the road, two giant storeys that have remained uncompleted since we first set foot in the town, an old KTS bus in which mice sat reserving seats for passengers that never came, beside it, a dusty road leading to our house.

We saw our school, lying low across a tiny bridge.

We passed through Winkongo, Pusunamogo, and were now in Pwalugu where they grew lots of watermelon and had meat and tomato factories. The scent of burnt savanna grassland, the sight of cattle roaming in the woods and farmers along the road stopping to stare or wave vaguely all added to the magical feeling of the journey.

Pwalugu reminds me of a scene in Cyndi Lauper’s Time after Time.

As we exited Pwalugu, motorcycles and donkeys competed with our bus for the road, forcing our driver to honk furiously…