Once upon a time I enjoyed my work and my country, my continent Africa was a gem that I constantly uncovered and explored one country at a time. I loved swimming in the Indian Ocean; I watched the fishermen fish and listened to the waves crushing on the reefs all night long. I made up stories of mysterious creatures and told them to my little cousins. Once upon a time seems so far away and a new reality has come to haunt me and my fellow Africans. Our laughter has quickly turned into tears. There is no dancing in the sand.

My mother was a business woman that sold imported goods from Mombasa port and distributed them in Uganda and Sudan (Present Day South Sudan). The first time I took coca cola I was seven years old. It was a rare commodity in Uganda and as a family we only enjoyed this soft drink every time my mother came back from her trips. Coca cola was in a glass bottle and I was always afraid of dropping it to the ground. As a family we were on the move quite a lot since we had a home in Kenya. In Mombasa we stayed in Nyali, my cousins and I always played barefoot at the shores of the Indian Ocean. We often made music using the coca cola bottles until we returned home. The glass bottles were very special to us. They represented continuity. In order to get a new coke you had to return the empty glass bottle to the shop keeper.