Uganda, as my grandfather describes it, was like no other place on earth. The weather was always perfect - not too hot, not too cold. Many of the villages were lined with sugarcane plantations. My grandfather would walk back from school each day in Lugazi, run into the sugarcane field and break the sugarcane open to devour its sweet contents. Though fluent in Swahili, and of Indian descent, he went to an English-speaking school. He played soccer in the village with all Ugandans, and enjoyed many of the tropical fruits that always seemed to be in abundance. Life was good. While most Indians had British passports, those who were born in Uganda, like my grandfather, had Ugandan passports and considered themselves Ugandan.

 

Then suddenly life violently split open like those sugarcanes. Imagine sitting in your home and a group of soldiers suddenly appear and demand you leave the country in a matter of hours, taking all of what you can pack in your suitcase. This is what happened to my grandfather's family. My grandfather recalls the lines leading up to the train stations, desperate people using one hand to clutch on to a suitcase that carried a few of their treasured belongings and the other hand gripping their small children, urgently trying to catch a train to anywhere but where they were.

 

Idi Amin, a brutal dictator declared a war on the ethnic groups who he felt were taking away opportunities from native Ugandans. He seized their properties, life savings, and their identities.

 

By this time, young Kishor was already in India studying to be a dentist while his family began to disperse around the world. Kishor felt helpless watching everything his family worked for be taken away so abruptly. He also felt sorry for himself. He was never able to say goodbye to his homeland. In his adopted home of India, he lived alone as a student and dreamed of a plan that would help him return to Uganda one day. He thankfully found love with a young woman named Shobha who became his wife.

 

Kishor felt unsettled because he was living in the home belonging to his parents-in-law and did not have a home of his own. The Indian government was unwilling to grant citizenship to displaced East Africans. He also knew he had to abandon his dream of returning to Uganda. The forced migration in Uganda led to a collapse of the Ugandan economy and it saddens Kishor to think of what could have been. Now all those villages where he once played soccer barefoot are now abandoned homes and office buildings ravaged by time. Kishor faced a challenging decision. It was unclear to him then whether he should stay in India where he would never have citizenship or take his infant child and new wife to another land where he would have to rebuild again.

 

Kishor decided to follow his brother to the United States to start over. While life in the United States did require a lot of adjustments ("Uganda never had pizza and burgers" Kishor says today), he could speak fluent English which helped him find a job easily. His first job was stocking the soda aisle in a grocery store. He then found work at an embroidery factor and he quickly became a manager.

 

The story of someone's life does not start at birth and end at death. I think of each person's life story as a continuum of a dream that transcends generations. A migrant's story often can sadly be one of a dream unfulfilled. My grandfather never got his dental license and perhaps never had the economic security that he had longed for. But he raised two sons who did go on to have medical degrees and my Dad, being one of those sons, also received his dental degree and eventually became a Maxillofacial Surgeon. I see so many remnants of Uganda, as my grandfather knew it, in my own life and I never understood the significance... until now. Since I was a toddler, I felt a deep connection to the African continent, watching National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. Later in my life, I read more about wildlife conservations efforts in East Africa, never knowing Uganda was part of my own story. One day soon, I hope to visit Uganda. When I visit wildlife sanctuaries, I will make sure I visit Lugazi and have my first taste of those beloved sugarcanes, fresh from the stalk. In a relay race, we pick up the baton and we carry on the dream that was nearly extinguished knowing that dreams live on. When I do travel to Uganda, I plan to pack that baton.