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- #148. This City
#148. This City
Shem Opolot
November 21, 2025
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 “You’re not a failure. Something you did failed.”
LIFE.
This City.
Do you ever feel like the universe is showing you a sign? Nudging you in a particular direction. I say the universe instead of God here, because sometimes the nudges seem so incredibly trivial that my dear Lord and savior surely can’t possibly be operating at such a menial level.
Sam Fisher’s This City is playing while I commute to church, so I pull out my phone to jot down my thoughts on cities.
You see, the ideas for these anecdotes are fleeting; they catch me at the oddest times, so I always have my phone or a pen and a notebook handy to scribble them down into immortality. Sometimes it’s just an idea—a phrase, a sentence—and sometimes the words shoot out of me like a splash of water on your chest when your spoon interrupts the urgent flow of tap water.
Anyway.
After thumbing down the first wave of thoughts, I glance at an Instagram story, and guess what? A writer I admire has written about Kampala City. I read it quickly, and of course, another wave of ideas swells into my thumb, begging for release. I oblige.
Cities.
Most people I know dream of retiring in isolation somewhere. A perch on the rolling hills of the countryside, a seaside stoop where the water carries away their problems of old in exchange for the zen of the relentlessly crashing waves. They’d have a fully sustainable estate: farm-to-table produce, recycled water, solar electricity, farm animals to spar with in lieu of disagreeable neighbors—the works.
I want that, too. For a week, max.
See, I love cities. Even Kampala, the city I was born in, which, if you’ve seen other cities, can hardly be called a city—save for the fact that all the money and opportunity in the country flow there like water in a near-empty jerrycan tilted on its corner. I love it there.
I find cities so honest.
In cities like Kampala, chaos reigns, and the privileged love that chaos because they hack it, wield it, and ride it to unimaginable wealth. And once they secure that wealth, which is never enough, they protect their gains by building the highest fences around their homes and driving the biggest cars. They even buy air filters, hoping to opt out of breathing the same air as the common folk on the street pulling at scraps.
In cities like Kampala, everyone aspires to one day have a tall fence, a big car, and an air filter.
In other cities, the better ones, I dare say, which are better appreciated by visitors than locals, you see intentional design and options. Public transportation, streetlights, walkways, highways, public spaces, parks, coffee shops… and tents for homeless people.
Honest.
A little further out, you see crosses of avenues running in four directions, each meeting the sky in the distance. Each locking arms with the trees on either side and dragging them to the sky, too. It’s beautiful.
The best cities, I’ve found, aspire for honesty, not perfection.
They constantly take stock of their empirical conditions and iterate to increase access and options. Despite the prevailing politics, they try to cater to the disgruntled—be they rich or poor. They constantly reimagine what is possible on the tiny piece of dirt they occupy.
Hold on. I’m in church now, and praise and worship has started.
***
Hey, you’re still here? You won’t believe what the sermon was about: cities.
When I was a kid, my family had just moved to the city, and one of the greatest wealth status symbols in the city was a giant satellite dish for cable television. We didn’t have one, but one day, my brother, one of the smartest guys I know, with me as his lackey, used a bunch of wires and metals to tap the dish signal from our neighbor.
My parents returned home from work that evening to find a circulatory system of metals and wires originating from somewhere behind the living room curtain and disappearing out the burglar-proofing on the balcony. In the living room, our engineering project culminated in the reinforced TV antenna, held in a fixed, precarious position by one of mum’s favorite ornaments.
My parents would’ve whopped us if they weren’t so impressed. Our contraption pulled a clear signal of most of the channels we’d only heard rumors about until we got the real dish.
Like my brother and I, cities must be honest but ambitious, contending with the present but imagining a brighter future.
Wherever you are, you must engage with the world as it is, but never lose your hope, your sense of wonder, your imagination. You must hold space for what is and what if.
My train is here.
THINGS.
A quote.
Everyone deserves a minimal standard of material security precisely so they can “have more time and leisure to appreciate the ordinary, good-enough pleasures of existence” and relinquish the never-ending struggle for more.
Now watching.
Watched the first episode, and I’m afraid Apple TV might have another banger here.
WORK.
You have a new PC or Mac…
What’s the first piece of software you install?
If you had a Mac, I’d say Raycast, and it’s not close.
And as of yesterday, if you have a PC, I’ll also say Raycast. It’ll completely transform how you use your computer. Here’s a video tour.
Thank me later.
FUN.
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> How do you know it was written by ChatGPT?
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Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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