Essays

Two Poems

ashes of hate(2023) even when the eyesof our memoryrefuse to wash awaywounds of gukurahundi  we will march up to the mountain top of peace & forgivenessour big hearts housing a million galaxies we will rinse our timid past under the boiling water of mosi-oa-tunya  & mana poolswe will seek refugein the healing &…

A picture of a painting depicting a road, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Road

Adetoro’s eyelids yearned to be closed despite his willingness to be awake. He stared at his asbestos ceiling for a minute, his mind empty, as it usually is on mornings. The crow of his rooster alerted him and he sprang…

Missionary Art

The British art teacher Margaret Trowell left a rich modernising legacy in Uganda. Just how pivotal was she?

Nalwoga Winnie Kisakye photographed for TWR by Rodney Muhumuza.

Studying

Nalwoga Winnie Kisakye graduated from Kyambogo University in December, not long before she completed writing this diary for TWR. She is twenty-four. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics, an academic program she described as “complex and interesting,”…

Inside Out

‘You cannot control the future, because, like Schrodinger’s cat, life is complex.’

One Poem

Jebba Blues(2025) God’s hand, if anything, is liquid.We Africans know it asholy strokes of cirrus sky,know it as the gushing veins of the Niger,know it as Mother’s milk upon cradle.That is why we survived the first flood,although Europeans failed to…

One Poem

Unweanable(2015) He clings onto breasts of the Republic,squeezing, biting them with 70-year-old teeth,blind to the queue of infants behind him.  From “A Nation in Labour,” the author’s poetry collection. © Ber Anena