People United Magazin
16
Alienation The project Alienation takes you on a journey of self-discovery of what a home is and where we belong. It reflects on knowledge about oneself through the lens of colonialism and decolonisation. It questions the paths that have been chosen and what has been taken for granted. The piece investigates the colonial foundations which underpinned the architecture of Kampala City and its contemporary impacts. As a young child, Robert used to know this city inside out. This was home, this was where he belonged, and this was his world. The older he got the more questions he had. But the answers never seemed to fully add up to any logic. The more questions he had the less he could feel connected to the city. The streets had names which he couldn’t relate
to. The neighbourhoods were divided by the size of the wallet and hence often also by the colour of skin. The weight of the city’s colonial years and the people’s endurance formed by its structural design had started to build up. A weight that every new generation will have to bear, whether they know it or not. A question started to crystallise: “How can we expect to grow and thrive as a city and as people when the foundation we have was neither built nor meant for us?”
