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- #130. Heart over head.
#130. Heart over head.
Shem Opolot
July 18, 2025
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 Greetings from Kampala, Uganda, where the fruit is sweeter and the weather is rational. This is the 130th issue of this newsletter, so, heads up, I’m feeling a little emotional.
My kids and I spent the better part of the wee hours of yester-morning demystifying shadows. It all began when my 3-year-old son astutely responded to his 1-year-old sister’s question about why shadows exist by saying, “The shadow is there because there is light.”
If I were a youth pastor, I’d take that line and run with it, preaching about duality and the complex relationship between good and evil.
But I’m not a youth pastor. I’m a proud father.
LIFE.
Heart over head.
“You Ugandans love Uganda,” my Nigerian friend said. “Have you ever heard a Nigerian who was born and raised in Nigeria speak about returning home with such joy?”
Every time I return to Uganda after a long time away, I give myself a 48-hour grace period to bitch about everything.
But the past few times I’ve been back have been different. The country seems tired. Its bones are atrophying, summoning aches and pains, and making squeaky sounds at the slightest physical exertion.
But when I squint and tilt my head, I see wonders everywhere.
I see a Uganda flapping its legs furiously against the tide—unconsumed by strife. I see a city desperate for direction and constantly in survival mode. I see a city that just doesn’t take itself too seriously. “Uganda” seems collectively wiser than Ugandans. It hums along like an old man that knows something you don’t but never tells.
I saw my mum and noticed she gets more beautiful with age. Her grey hair, which her younger self might’ve hidden, now shines like a new set of cutlery reserved for her best visitors. I found myself sitting in a cinema watching my life. Watching as my kids—as kids do—abandoned the amusements my mum prepared with great care in favor of the tumbleweed of wires and extension cables in the corner of the living room, near the TV.
I stood on the balcony and scanned the concrete complex.
The gateman was willingly trapped in a prolonged handshake with a colleague. They wore the matching security outfits, so they were either work colleagues, or they’d be married soon.
I craned my neck to view the opposite end, coughed a little, and remembered the dusty road on the way there. Would they complete that road in this decade? My 48-hour window had elapsed. So I moved on.
Near the light pole that doubled as a boundary marker, a couple at cross purposes shared a conversation. The man—eager, gesticulating, and mumbling to secure a rental in the girl’s heart, I assume—ignored her body language. She was the timekeeper of the conversation: her left foot and left shoulder faced the gate; her head occasionally bent to check her wristwatch. The screeching gate, begging for oil and fewer visitors, soundtracked their unsuccessful courtship.
I left the balcony to tour the house I grew up in, marvelling at how small it was, or how big I was. I inspected the walls for the scars I inflicted, but time had healed those wounds.
My children’s giggles, the interpretations of which could be discerned depending on how loud they were, snapped me back to reality momentarily. My son, who had refused to eat, was scaling the balcony bars. His sister, her father’s daughter who will eat anything you put in front of her, was also pulled into the competitive sport of scaling the balcony bars. I watched from a safe distance—apprehensive, but smiling nostalgically as I superimposed the times my brother and I did the same thing on the same bars.
I believe kids teach us how life should be lived: with our hearts and not our heads. Kids love routines, but they don’t know they love routines. They focus on living life. On experiencing it. They don’t optimize for anything except indulgence. They don’t care for productivity.
As I pulled into the gate at home on the night I arrived from the airport, the gateman, squinting at the car’s bright headlights, welcomed me with the warmest smile. I was tired, but I smiled back. I was delighted to see him. But we were like two grounded kids waving at each other from inside their respective fences—the boundary neither of us built limited our interaction. As we parked and I unloaded my suitcases, I recalled the gateman’s bloodshot eyes, full of the bewilderment of someone who had just woken up from a thousand sleeps. And yet, 100 people in the complex rested easy in their beds, relying on his protection. I was about to be number 101.
So when my Nigerian friend exclaimed about how much Ugandans seem to love Uganda, I told him things might be different if we followed our heads instead of our hearts.
THINGS.
A quote.
This is part of a larger thread you can find here. But this first part resonated with me because the lack of class solidarity isn’t unique to Americans. Even though most people are closer to the poverty line than billionaire status, they side with the wealthy because they think they might be rich one day.
When the American empire finally collapses, historians won’t be stunned by the greed of the elite; They’ll be stunned by the loyalty of the poor.
A picture.
Being on a boat over a month ago recalibrated my dreams and reminded me of the first time I ever rode on a boat: we got a speeding ticket for speeding in a manatee zone, and I didn’t even know they gave out speeding tickets on water.
WORK.
Understand the ampersand
So you have data:
You want the phone numbers to begin with Uganda’s country code: +256. For example, John Doe’s phone number should be +256772123456.
To add “+256” to the beginning of the phone numbers, you use the ampersand (&).
Like so:
You must use the quotation marks if you want to begin with the plus sign. See what happens if you omit it 😊.
FUN.
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Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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