A return to Old Kampala, an unexpected reunion, and a question about the green spaces we keep building over.

At eight, Patel thought their compound in Old Kampala was enormous.

There was room for cricket, provided nobody hit the ball towards his mother’s windows. A tree leaned over the boundary wall. Their veranda accommodated relatives, visitors and conversations that seemed to last all afternoon.

Next door lived Uncle Rwamiti, his father’s friend.

He often arrived carrying nothing and left having eaten something.

Then the family moved to Canada.

Decades later, Patel returned to Uganda as a wealthy senior manager working for a multinational. His visit involved presentations, meetings and a hotel room with a view.

But he kept one afternoon free.

“Take me to Old Kampala,” he told the driver. “I want to see our house.”

He had rehearsed the visit in his mind.

He would stand at the gate. Introduce himself. Explain that he had lived there as a boy. Perhaps the present occupants would let him see the veranda.

He remembered the old Indian-style house: its windows, the rooms opening into familiar spaces, his mother calling him in before darkness.

The driver slowed.

Patel looked out.

“Here?”

He checked the location again.

A tall building stood where the house should have been. Shops occupied the ground floor. A man was unloading cartons near the spot where his father used to park.

Patel stepped out.

He walked a little further, searching for something that would prove they had stopped on the wrong stretch of road.

But the neighbouring houses had disappeared too.

He could not find the tree.

He approached a shopkeeper.

“There used to be a man next door to us. Rwamiti. A friend of my father.”

The shopkeeper shook his head.

“How long ago?”

Patel began calculating, then stopped.

“A long time.”

He returned to the car carrying a photograph of a building he had never seen before, on land he knew by heart.

“You have your father’s face.”

It took several calls to trace Uncle Rwamiti.

Nsangi, someone said. In the hills. Ask for Kirabo Forest Park.

Patel arranged another afternoon.

He found the old man beneath a tree.

For a moment, Uncle Rwamiti studied him without speaking.

Then he stood.

“You have your father’s face.”

Patel had prepared himself to discuss work, Canada and how long it had been.

He had not prepared for that sentence.

They embraced.

Soon they were talking about people Patel had not heard mentioned in years. A neighbour who borrowed tools and forgot to return them. His mother’s insistence that visitors eat. A cricket ball that had broken a window and produced three different accounts of who had hit it.

“You blamed another boy,” Uncle Rwamiti said.

“There were several possible suspects.”

“There was one boy holding the bat.”

Patel laughed.

Eventually, he took out his phone.

“Our house.”

Uncle Rwamiti studied the photograph.

“Yes.”

“Your place too.”

“Yes.”

“I thought there would be something left.”

The old man handed back the phone.

They sat quietly.

“But what will you do with it?”

Patel looked across Kirabo.

Trees. Open lawn. Water. Space between things.

“People must have approached you about developing this place.”

“They have suggestions.”

“Such as?”

“More buildings. Music. Big parties. Food and drinks.”

Patel smiled. He could imagine the proposals. He had sat through enough business presentations to picture the revenue projections.

“And what do you tell them?”

“That I want people to come here and have room to breathe.”

“Yes, but…” Patel paused. “What will you do with it?”

Before Uncle Rwamiti answered, a child ran across the lawn after a ball.

Her grandmother followed slowly, calling instructions that the child appeared to consider optional.

Near the pond, someone sat with an open book.

A couple walked past, talking.

Uncle Rwamiti watched the grandmother settle onto a seat.

“People say a place like this is doing nothing.”

Patel slipped his phone into his pocket.

The child retrieved her ball and ran back.

He remembered his mother calling from the veranda.

Who plans for the space between buildings?

“Everyone cannot keep their land open,” Patel said.

“No,” Uncle Rwamiti replied. “But must everyone close it?”

They walked beneath the trees.

Patel thought about the buildings he had seen in Old Kampala. They contained homes, businesses and livelihoods. He understood their purpose.

He also understood why an owner might look at an open piece of land and calculate what could be earned from it.

But he found himself wondering what never appeared in those calculations.

The shade used by someone who owned no garden.

The ground where children could play.

The walk an older person could manage without dodging vehicles.

The quiet someone needed after a difficult week.

Each owner could make a reasonable decision. A neighbourhood could still lose something essential.

“Perhaps we assume people can go to the national parks,” Patel said.

Uncle Rwamiti stopped beside a bench.

“Would your grandmother have needed a holiday to sit under a tree?”

Patel looked back towards the lawn.

There were experiences his childhood had given him freely that he now planned carefully for his own children.

Your move

That evening, an old family friend sent him a message.

Did you find your home?

Patel typed:

It is gone.

He stared at the words.

Then he added:

I found Uncle Rwamiti in Nsangi. We spent the afternoon beneath the trees.

He attached a photograph from Kirabo.

The next morning, before his meetings began, Patel wrote a question in his notebook:

When every open space has a building planned for it, who plans for the open space?

He underlined it.

He knew how to ask what a development would bring.

At his next meeting, he would also ask what it would remove—and whether anyone had made room to keep it.

Uncle Rwamiti—Your Move.

Think of one green space near you. Who uses it? What does it make possible? If it disappeared, where would those people go?

If this choice stays with you, there are more to explore at unclerwamiti.com.

Uncle Rwamiti—the uncle your parents should probably never have introduced you to.