Zohran Mamdani’s Homecoming: A Mayoral Candidate’s Journey to the Pearl of Africa From Newyork back to Uganda his first homehttp://www.avirooms.com The red dust of Entebbe Road swirled around Zohran Mamdani’s rented Toyota as he navigated Kampala’s vibrant chaos, his heart pounding to the rhythm of the city he’d left behind at age seven. The New York City mayoral hopeful—a human rights lawyer turned progressive firebrand—hadn’t returned to Uganda in 25 years. Now, with the Statue of Liberty pin still fastened to his lapel and a campaign rally postponed, he’d come to reconcile the two worlds shaping his bid to lead America’s largest metropolis. Roots and Reckoning At the family compound in Mbarara, Zohrun’s elderly Nyina (mother) greeted him with a trembling embrace, her hands still bearing calluses from decades of nursing shifts in Queens. Relatives spilled out of clay-walled homes, roasting nyama choma (grilled meat) over open flames while debating his controversial platform: defunding carceral systems, universal childcare, and reparations for redlined neighborhoods. “You speak of justice,” his uncle, a retired Ugandan Supreme Court justice, mused while sharpening a sugarcane stalk with a pocketknife. “But will New Yorkers trust a muzungu who forgets his mother tongue?” The question lingered like...