Miracles and horrors. Winners and losers. Rich and poor. The known and the unknown. That is the conflict at the heart of late twentieth century East Africa. While gunfire rang amongst the vast plains of 1972 Uganda, five-year-old Vipul Patel was trying on assortments of flat hats, and playing with the finest of china. The store was called “Cheap Stores” an import-export company on Kampala road, the main street of the capital of Uganda, and owned by Vipul’s father. However, just as every other Indian child submerged amongst the mounds of coffee plantations across the Ugandan border, Vipul would realize he was no ordinary child in fact the opposite.
At five years of age everything collapsed. General Idi Amin overthrew the elected government of Uganda, organizing a regime that would massacre 300,000 civilians, kill Vipul’s uncle, and in 1972 expel all Indian and Pakistani citizens. Having decided not to worry Vipul’s agitated father, Vipul’s mother packed only the “necessities”. Vipul’s mother cut one end of the toothpaste bottle choosing instead to fill them with gold necklaces. While radio stations hollered Idi Amin’s propaganda, Vipul’s father wasted no time. Packing only essentials, five daughters, two sons, and a pair of desperate parents packed their bags, leaving the place they called home. Vipul would remember traversing an airport held under gunpoint wearing his dad’s “flat hat while waiting to go to London.”
Arriving in London, Vipul’s parents waited out at a 6-week refugee camp, leaving Vipul and his siblings with their aunt in the heart of urban London. The government helped Vipul’s father find a job as a railroad conductor in Peterborough. The family lived in a small Victorian semi-detached council home. For the first time Vipul’s mother worked on a conveyer belt in a toy factory. Overtime things settled down at 114 Dickens Street, all the children grew up, went to college, and got small conservative weddings. Vipul’s father would end up fulfilling his dream, buying a small business in the heart of London. At the same time Vipul graduated as a pharmacist from the University of London. In 1993, Vipul met Sejal, an accomplished software engineer, who got multiple offers to work in the United States. The couple would eventually make their home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A small city hidden amongst the trees, a fresh start with opportunities abound. My father had achieved the American dream.
