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.
For me, it was a trip I've long wanted to make to reconnect with my roots. Even though my great-grandparents were born in what is now India, they -- like thousands of others -- made the long and perilous journey across the Indian Ocean to East Africa as labourers under the British Empire. They eventually settled in Uganda, where my grandparents and parents were born.
I not only benefited from a cross-cultural mix of cuisine -- kadhi and khichdi (an Indian dish) were as common in my house as matoke (a Ugandan dish) -- 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.
Those are connections that can't be severed, even if you are forced out of your country as my parents were in August 1972, when Idi Amin gave Ugandan Asians 90 days to leave. The only country most had ever known and called home.
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.
It took 30 hours and four flights to get to Kampala. Toronto to Montreal, then to Brussels, a stopover in Kigali, Rwanda and then finally, the capital of Uganda.
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 (motorcycle taxis described as "mosquitoes of the road") it's a trip that took well over an hour.
In small towns, landmarks become critical reference points and this one was no different. The gas station from where my mom remembered turning right to get to her house was still there. But the mango and jambula (black plum) trees close to where she lived had been cut down.
We drove.
We walked.
We made a video call to my grandma in London, as this was once her home too.
My sister and I desperately searched in hopes of giving my mom and us a sense of peace in finding something tied to her past.
Soon, it was clear that the way my mom's mind's eye had preserved this town, a two minute drive from the equator separating the Northern and Southern hemispheres, was far different from reality.
Fifty years is a long time. Long enough for the momentum of life to take over, and for the familiar to fade away into the foreign.
It was a blur.
Until one man helped unlock the memories of the past.
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Sachedina’s journey to learn more about not only his family history, but about other Canadian immigrants expelled from Uganda, will be released in a W5 exclusive documentary this October for the 50th anniversary of the Ugandan Asian Expulsion.
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