The Brand That Chose Me: My Journey to BusiTales… (P.1)
A Childhood Wrapped in Story
As a child, I often travelled to my homeland, Uganda. They call it the Pearl of Africa, a nickname bestowed by Winston Churchill in 1908 to capture its unrivalled beauty, abundance, and vibrant diversity. Though one could drink in the magic of the land with one's own eyes, lush greenery, crimson sunsets, the rhythmic pulse of the community, my favourite way to experience Uganda back then was through stories.
Now, you might wonder: what need is there for stories when you are already in the story, living and breathing it firsthand? But stay with me. The stories I encountered didn’t just describe the land, they revealed it. They uncovered mysteries I hadn’t yet lived, dreams I hadn’t yet dared to dream, and a deeper kind of magic that made everything shimmer a little brighter.
Back to Bukutu
My mother grew up in a small village called Bukutu, nestled in the Kamuli District, Uganda. She had me young, her first child, in the city, Kampala. Not long after, she made the brave journey to the UK. Me barely two years old in her arms. Looking back, I wonder what unspoken dreams lived inside her then. Perhaps she, too, was trying to follow the thread of a story still unfolding. But no matter how far she travelled, she never forgot her roots. And so, she took us, my siblings and me, back to Uganda often, determined we’d know where we came from.
Before we fell in love with the buzz of Kampala, with its busy streets and city comforts, our memories were rooted in the village. There was no television. No gadgets. No phones. None of the same distractions our London life had to offer. But there was joy of a rare and sacred kind.
Imagination in the Jungle
If we weren’t darting through the dense jungle of Bukutu, amongst banana and coffee trees with handmade play guns, crafted from their thick stems and shaped by the quick hands of our imaginations, we were learning how to make bullet sounds, courtesy of our ever-resourceful grandmother. Who’d carve out rectangular stumps for us to rub our hands over, creating the sounds. With each pow, pow, pow, we built worlds. We were warriors, explorers, enemies and heroes.
Hours would slip away in play, and when we finally returned to my grandparents’ large farmhouse dusty, sweaty, full of stories of our own, we were welcomed with the sweetness of homemade passion fruit juice, golden and divine. My grandfather, wise and gentle, would sit across us in his chair, glasses low on his nose, a notebook in hand. He always had something to teach. “Knowledge is everything,” he’d say, again and again, as if planting seeds in our young minds.
The Storyteller We Didn’t Know We Needed
Then came the main event, lunch prepared over a fire, and our cousin Bitali, our human television. As the air filled with the scent of smoked maize and spiced beans, Bitali would gather us around and begin. Story after story tumbled from her lips, some scary, some silly, some magical enough to keep us dreaming long after the sun had gone down.
Though she may have been nudged outside by the adults with a half-hearted “go play with the children,” it was clear when Bitali told stories, she was alive. Brighter than the firelight, and more animated than any cartoon, she became the character. She danced, she growled, she wept, she soared. In hindsight, she was born for the stage, but life had other plans. She studied travel and tourism, becoming a tour guide leading others across Uganda with her voice, her stories, and her spark.
Years later, when I began to grasp what it meant to choose a career, I thought of Bitali. I smiled. Of course, she became a tour guide. She’d been preparing for it her whole life, whether she knew it or not.
Perhaps… so was I, prepping for my own becoming and so it begun...
(5 Minute Read)
This is the first in a blog series on the journey behind BusiTales—part memoir, part manifesto. If it resonated, stick around. The next chapters explore how life’s twists, missteps, and over 52 jobs shaped the story behind this storytelling brand…
