I had moved back to my home town in Tororo, a district in the Eastern part of Uganda to have some sort of recess, a much needed break if you will. This was coming after a number of reasons but the major one was to grieve the loss of my mother. It took me three months to let my mind recuperate because that loss had knocked the light out of my core. During this period, my best friend Liliane was in constant communication with me through phone since she was staying and working in Kampala, the place I had left. I don’t like taking phone calls but for some reason sitting outside the gate on the pavement on a Sunday morning watching the town go about it’s life with Liliane drowning me in fits of laughter with different stories ranging from work to relationships was worth it. It helped me get better in a way.
One particular afternoon while I was on the phone with her, a light bulb went off in my head and I said to her, ‘we should start a podcast where we discuss and talk about these issues we’ve faced.’ The reason being we knew and had interacted with a lot of people our age and realized there were some things we saw fit to keep to ourselves maybe due to embarrassment and fear about how the world would perceive us.
After my time off, I made my way back home to the city and got straight to putting my idea into action. It’s what had driven me to be better each day and nurture my mind back to fruition and zen. I made YouTube my friend by researching extensively on how to start and sustain a podcast and made notes so they could guide us in this venture. It was exciting, this thing. It went as far as waking up in the middle of the night to jot down an idea on a topic we would discuss.
One memory that will forever be indelibly imprinted on my mind was when we shot the introduction of the podcast that we would use on the episodes we would eventually release. Liliane and I didn’t have the fancy equipment needed to shoot a podcast. All we had was my phone and the app that would aid me in editing. She came over to my home and we started with the introduction. We made many mistakes that had us in fits. At one point, one of us would start talking late or forget the words to speak in the middle or the background song would end before we finished speaking. After over five trials we did it! And I remember us locking eyes and seeing the excitement and disbelief that we had actually taken a step in realizing a mutual goal. It was monumental.
Martin Scorsese once said, ‘the most personal is the most creative.’ It was of utmost importance for us to go in having this profound statement at the forefront of our art. If we were going to talk about issues we had faced and were facing and how we hoped to change the negative ones, we had strip down our walls and be honest with our listeners. Our first episode centred on the Ugandan Public transport system. We talked about our different experiences in relation to it and mainly focused on tips and tactics on how not to fall prey to the negative side of the system as regards sexual harassment and theft to mention but a few.
Since it was a bit personal for us, I was afraid and constantly worried prior the release because I’ve always been private and so showing the world a tiny part of me was making me so anxious. But I also knew I had to do this, it would be the start of creating change in our community however small it seemed.
When we released our first episode, it garnered 100 plays in under thirty minutes which was honestly mind blowing! My turning point was when I received a text from a girl I didn’t know saying she had gone through a lot of the experiences we had talked about and thanked us for the tips to survive and avoid danger whilst using public transport. I felt rewarded just by that feedback and instantly knew we were on the right path. This outlet we had created was going to make our voices heard and hopefully change the lives of the people in our community.
Fast forward to now, our ‘These Ugandan Streets podcast’ is six episodes in and just barely starting because the goals we would like to achieve keep getting bigger and better all directed towards bringing to light issues that are affecting us and need to be throughly looked into like gender issues, mental health, substance abuse, pressure from society to mention but a few. We hope to change our community one listener at a time.