I’m preparing to leave Uganda again for a couple of weeks. If I remember correctly, the day I arrive in Finland, the day after tomorrow, will be exactly one year after I left for Uganda for the first time. But no circle is closing here; it feels more like a case of things opening up.

I may have a chance to see snow, first time in more than eighteen months. Be that as it may, I doubt I’ll have any time to utilise that lovely white element. I have to content myself with reading books in which people ski through the Nordic countryside. Just passed a scene like that in Mikael Niemi’s Populäärimusiikkia Vittulajänkältä (Populärmusik från Vittula); and in the scene after that everyone gathers on the bridge to experience the grand show of ice breaking in the Tornionjoki river. Rock’n roll music. Distant tunes, from where I’m standing now.

A mental note: I’m beginning to imagine a relation between traffic congestion in Kampala and coffee drinking in Finland. Something to do with naturalised collective mania, a general excess that has reached the level of ideology. Though there are huge differences too: the moment gas consumption per capita in Uganda reaches the top global level, this world will be no more. 09:44