While traversing East Africa in the back of an overland truck, I witness countless moments happening outside my window that I wish I could photograph. Moments of people going about their day, ordinary actions highlighted by spectacular light and flashes of color that would make outstanding images. But we’re speeding by at 80 kilometers an hour and it’s a fruitless effort to capture these scenes in blurry, out-of-focus shots with distracting reflections in my window.

I wish I could take a screenshot of what my eyes see.

These moments, however, plant themselves in my mind, and I’d like to record them here.

So sit back. Imagine getting comfortable in your seat on the overland truck. Feel the dust-laden wind rushing through the window as the following images fly by…

• Little Ugandan school children running around a playground in teal uniforms with bright purple sweaters.

• Men in button-down shirts and nice slacks, women wearing fancy dresses in a kaleidoscope of hues… on a hot Tuesday morning.

• The light dances across the green landscape of rice terraces and endless fields of banana trees and tea plantations.

• Locals throw cautiously curious and borderline suspicious glances our way.

• We pass by cyclists weighed down by stalks of bananas or dozens of pineapples strapped to their bikes.

• Children of only five or so years tote canisters of water atop their heads. Mothers do the same while wearing their littlest babes.

• Half-finished buildings with brightly colored ads promote telecom services and the national beer. Remarkably, iamkenyan.com is a beer website.

• Hands reach up to wave hello, a simple gesture of kindness learned in infancy across all cultures. Passengers on our truck early respond with enthusiastic waves back. An exchange of goodwill.

• In Kampala, a homeless man sleeps under a tree, his brown skin and dusty clothes nearly entirely camouflaging himself into the earth. If he had a red cap and striped shirt he could pass for a Ugandan ‘Where’s Waldo.’

• Bus loads of locals pass by, blowing whistles and shaking rattling gourds and making celebratory noise. Perhaps it has something to do with tomorrow’s World Cup, or perhaps it’s another kind of festivity.

• We pass dozens of shops selling beds — twins, queens, bunks, and a surprising number of triple bunks — mostly with metal frames painted in neon colors.

• Shops, pubs, accommodation, and the like in Kampala are decrepit and dusty, but the gas stations and ATMs look brand new.

• The flash of a neon pink dress on a neverending dirt path between fields, skipping towards the horizon.

• A girl of no more than twelve in a yellow dress with a machete, hacking away fruit from a plant in front of her unfinished home.

• Bright reds and greens and yellows of fresh vegetables for sale at a lone, unattended counter in the sun, juxtaposed a mere half mile later by dozens of people selling similar veggies in baskets perched atop their heads.

• Fields of crops bordered by thin streams stretching towards the horizon.

• A shack that reads “hair cutting and phone charging” and another that reads “Nile High Bungy.”

• A dozen men riding to / from work in the back of a truck, all wearing matching blue helmets.

• A woman in a red dress dancing with a man in a light blue button down shirt, their delight obvious; I don’t hear music but can read it in their moving hips.

• Older men push their bikes along a dirt path as the sun drops in the distance.

There are dozens of empty hours on our overland truck to fill with music, books, podcasts, and photo editing; there is space to think about everything and nothing at all, and to be inspired by these passing countryside scenes. It feels selfish and productive. It’s as though time stands still, even as we move forward hour by hour, kilometer by kilometer.