With the beginning of this sentence, I have succumbed to admonitions from several quarters to “put my story out” now that I am a public figure. It has always felt presumptuous and vain to recount the story of my life in public. And there are a number of ways to do this: chronologically, anecdotally, and so forth. In any way that the story is told, my 36 years of living have been quite eventful, if not peripatetic.

I was born on 28 January 1974 to a young, polite and beautiful nursing course trainee and a very vibrant, loud and charming local government functionary (Katibu Tarafa): Josephine and Yusuf. Few months after my birth, my father was promoted to become a District Commissioner in Tanga. After three years, my mother went for further studies and my father went to join the military for Officer Cadet course in Tanzania Military Academy in Monduli. Me and my little brother were shipped to our village Mahezangulu, Lushoto, and later to our maternal grandmother who was living alone (my mother is a sole child and my grandma was widowed early) in a village around Kyaka – now Missenyi District – about 20 kilometres between the border of Uganda and Tanzania. After a year, Idi Amin invaded Tanzania and the Ugandan army occupied areas around our village: my grandma, my brother and I became refugees in displaced persons camp in areas further back from the border. Our mother made attempts to come get us but roads were closed around Biharamulo and people were not allowed to travel to the “war zone”. When the full war between Tanzania and Uganda broke out in 1978, my father, as an energetic new army lieutenant, was assigned to the frontlines – and therefore could not assist in getting us out of the refugees camp, until one day when he showed up in dirty uniforms soaked with rain commandeering an empty bus and got us permit to travel back to safe zone and reunite with our mother.

When the war ended, my father was moved to Dodoma to work for the (CCM) party. (My sister, Mwamvita, was born there and was named because of the remembrance of my father’s safe return from war). In our neighbourhood, my brother and I were the butt of the joke because as passenger planes flew in the skies above we would cry and ran to hid in the bushes – because of the trauma of bombardment of Ugandan warplanes. In 1981, we were moved to Monduli where in 1982 I started Standard I at Rasharasha Primary School. In primary school, I was nicknamed “January Makaptura” as my mother bought me oversized shorts so they could last a couple of years.