Teenage kicks | 11 May 2017

Imagine living in a country where the average age is under 16 (in the UK it’s currently 40 and increasing) so that everywhere you go you’re surrounded by teenagers. It sounds exhilarating. Such optimism and energy; the sheer vitality of young blood coursing through the streets. How brilliant, too, for a country to be unfettered by how things have always been done, no elders to restrain them, hold them back, warn against change. But nothing is that simple. For The Compass: A Young World (Wednesday) on the World Service (produced by Mike Gallagher), Alan Kasujja took us to his native Uganda to find out what it’s like to walk down a street where no one shuffles along, wearied by the years. In the capital, Kampala, we can hear the colour, the life force, captured on his microphone. His voice, too, betrays the impact of being there.

Kasujja says that every time he comes back, ‘I start to feel a bit mature,’ in contrast to those he meets.