‘Like many men of his generation, he tends to push his feelings down from his heart to his toes’: Meera Sodha on her father’s homecoming

After a childhood of grief, hardship and hunger, the Guardian food writer’s father Raj always resisted going back to Uganda. What happened when he finally agreed to accompany her on a bittersweet journey into the past?

The moment I step off the plane and on to the soil of Entebbe it hits me. Uganda is in my blood. This country that had once existed only in my imagination is finally real. The heat is heavy, the earth bright and rich like dark terracotta. I want to capture this moment – me with my 75-year-old dad, back where he was born. A place he never imagined he would return to. I whoop and reach for my camera, turn it towards my father’s face.

“You’re back!” I say.

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