“Mummy, I smell something in the kitchen!” a little girl exclaimed, wrinkling her nose.

Her mother, who had just stepped away to check on the baby napping in the bedroom, paused. “What kind of smell, sweetheart?” her mother asked, slightly distracted.

“It’s… funny,” she replied, “like stinky eggs, maybe?”

Her mother rushed back to the kitchen. The smell was unmistakable – gas. Her mother’s heart was racing with worry. She had turned on the gas cooker to boil water, but it didn’t light, causing the gas to escape and fill the entire kitchen.

“Oh, my goodness!” her mother gasped, quickly turning off the gas and opening all the windows. “Very good work, princess! You saved us! What you smelled was gas, and it can be very dangerous. If we hadn’t noticed, it could have caused a big problem.”

The little girl, still a bit confused, looked up at her mother. “I did?” she asked.

“Yes, you did!” her mother replied, her voice filled with relief and pride. “You have a very good nose. When gas leaks into a room, it can cause a big fire. That’s why the gas company adds a special smell to the gas, so if there’s ever a leak, people will smell it and know something is wrong. It’s like a warning sign!”

The little girl’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. “I’m glad I told you,” she said, a small smile spreading across her face.

This short story explains a simple scientific fact: liquid petroleum gas (propane/butane) is naturally odorless, so manufacturers add a sulfur compound called mercaptan to create a distinct “rotten egg” smell as a safety warning.

If you explain this to young learners, they will remember the story far more easily than the technical explanation. Stories are easy to recall, making complex ideas simple to understand. This simple truth was the foundational philosophy behind the creation of Lapatutu Writing Creations.

When we started out, our objective was straightforward: write stories and use them as active learning tools for primary school pupils. Driven by a passion for cultivating reading habits, we authored original storybooks and gave them out to young readers at no cost. As shown in the image above, these early classroom sessions—such as this one at St. Jude Nursery and Primary School in Namulanda—were where our storytelling approach first came to life.

In our early years, we brought these storytelling sessions to several other classrooms as well, including Mapeera Primary School and Kitende Church of Uganda Primary School. Everywhere we went, we saw the joy of learning made easy.

Over time, that same educational approach evolved into our core business model. We took the exact same principle of clear storytelling and applied it to brands—helping organizations communicate their mission, impact, and history in ways easy to understand. Today, our portfolio includes brand impact documentation for clients like Newman Foods Limited and Smart Foods Uganda, as well as personal legacy profiles for figures such as artist Prof. George William Kyeyune.

We are glad that even as our business evolved, we stayed connected to this mission as our way of giving back to where it all started. This year, with our work at Nakiwogo Primary School, this mission remains alive through story reading sessions and the recent Lapatutu Letter Writing Competition—again, using the power of writing to deliver a lesson on proper waste disposal.

Simplicity in writing remains a foundational principle for everything we create, and looking back at where we started explains why. We began by writing for children—crafting stories that young minds could easily grasp. In fact, our name, Lapatutu, originated from a child’s playful pronunciation of the word laptop.

Today, whether we are developing a book, documenting a brand impact story, or creating original fictional stories, our standard remains the same: write it simply enough for a child to follow, while preserving the full integrity and purpose of the message.

As a window into those early days, below is a video from a storytelling session hosted by our founder, under the pen name Mr. Lapatutu, at St. Jude Nursery and Primary School in Namulanda: