Adulting

There is a particular kind of clarity that arrives in childhood, often uninvited, often indelible. For Ruth Komuntale, it came at five years old, stepping off a bus from Fort Portal into the chaotic embrace of Kampala. She had left behind the clean, misty air of the Rwenzori foothills, where tea estates unfurl like green velvet and the morning tastes of earth and possibility. In the capital, she took her first breath and it was a thick, acrid weight of exhaust, dust, and urgency. It was a child's shock, but it planted a seed that would take two decades to bloom.