Hamilton Spectator Archives – Page 26 of 42

What we can learn from Nelson Mandela about solitude

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / February 1, 2014 / 2014, African culture, African politics, Apartheid, meditation, Nelson Mandela, prison, solitude, South Africa, spirituality, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 1, 2014)

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

— From the poem Invictus

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Much has been made about the tremendous story from Africa that ended 2013, that of Nelson Mandela and the worldwide send-off he was given, and rightly so.

Mandela will be remembered as the embodiment of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus, that 19th-century verse describing a man who, as Henley put it, fell in the clutch of circumstance, who knew the bludgeonings of chance and bloody head, who found wrath and tears and horror, but through it all was unafraid and, in the end, “captain of his soul.”

Well over a month after Mandela’s death, his name is still easily spoken across Africa.

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We’ll be home for Christmas (for more than mere words)

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / December 21, 2013 / 2013, childhood anxiety, Christmas, fatherhood, parental fears, parenthood, suffering, the incarnation, the Word, today's children, words / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 21, 2013)

ENTEBBE, UGANDA ✦ It’s the end of another year of words.

Words that have routinely informed us and words that have even sometimes, like summer snow, given a fresh look at everyday things. Like what happened recently in Africa during my children’s nightly reading, a story both troubling and reassuring.

“You know,” I said, after, “things will happen in your life. Bad things. And nobody will be able to save you from them. I won’t be able to and neither will your mother. But let me tell you something. God loves to take these sorts of things and turn them into something good.”

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And now onsreen in Uganda, it’s Rob Ford

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / December 7, 2013 / 2013, African politics, Gandhi, JFK, leadership, politics, Rob Ford, Toronto, Toronto mayor, Toronto politics / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – November 23, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA – When Rob Ford first appeared onscreen in Africa I was sitting in front of some public televisions, a place where I often work, reading about Ghandi.

It was strange because Gandhi, the great Indian leader, led a fifth of the world’s people to democracy in his bare-feet, boney and malnourished and wrapped in just a sort of bed-sheet, while the burly mayor of Toronto has become a small man even while, in heavy shoes, he’s fallen with such a thud that it somehow has to be heard around the world.

The last time I recall Ontario news making it this far was six years ago when the Shedden massacre involving the infamous Banditos gang got a couple of paragraphs in a Ugandan daily.

And now onsreen in Uganda, it’s Rob Ford Read More »

War may be hell, but it’s strange too

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 24, 2013 / 2013, cold war, Korean tourism, Korean unity, Korean War, North Korea, Panmunjeom, personhood, pseudo war, South Korea / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, October 24, 2013)

PANMUNJEOM, SOUTH KOREA ✦ We’re at the border of North and South Korea, at the planet’s hottest line in the sand, and the guard – a youth in military garb and dark sunglasses – tells my wife to change her footwear. She has open sandals and the North Koreans, even from a distance, might see her feet.

Which shows that while war may be hell, it’s strange too, certainly this pseudo-war at Panmunjeom, the UN’s demilitarized zone, the so-called DMZ separating these two Koreas, countries that stopped formal shooting 60 years ago but still without any treaty.

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When the poor come knocking

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 21, 2013 / 2013, African culture, deception, ethics, Mzungus, poverty, rich and poor, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, September 20, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was late and dark and unusual because the visitor lives hours away and I didn’t expect him. But he came anyway and sat at my front door and cried and told me all about it, how thieves had come the night before.

He had been at church, he explained, at one of those all-night prayer services common in this part of Africa, when the rats did it, when they broke in and cleaned out his house. Clothing, furniture, cash I had recently given for his kids’ schooling, everything gone by sunrise.

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On prayer, danger and flying into it all

4 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / August 17, 2013 / 2013, Christianity, danger, Froese biography, malaria, prayer, spirituality, suffering, travel / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 17, 2013)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s a strange world, especially here on what is, for all I know, my deathbed. It’s malaria and I’m dreaming. Or maybe in the fight of it I’m actually hallucinating.

I see a friend, a writing mentor, a bear of a man, the sort you can disappear into when he hugs you. He’s an American who’s never been to Africa, no not once. But he’s somehow made it over the ocean and through the walls to kneel at my Ugandan bedside.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I’m praying for you.”

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On anniversaries and a medley of “summer love”

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / July 29, 2013 / 2013, African culture, anniversaries, David and Jonathan, gay rights, homosexuality, love, summer love / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, July 26, 2013)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ Love has always been one of those loaded words, one that means everything and nothing at the same time because we can love the latest Bond movie or country music or summer rain, but this has nothing to do with summer love at, say, a July wedding, or the love that shows on the faces of a couple who have sailed through thick and thin.

This is what it was the other day, an anniversary of 55 years. The man smiled and looked me in the eye and told me that he knew from the first time he saw her. “She stepped off the train and I heard a voice: ‘This is the woman you’ll marry.’”

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Faraway home is where the heart is

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 15, 2013 / 2013, African culture, Canadian culture, Elizabeth Froese, Froese biography, homesickness, Third Culture kids / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 15, 2013)

It’s 10 years later, dear Elizabeth, and it’s true: Home is where your heart is. You’ve said it now in plain words. Your heart, with your imagination, is in our African home.

This is what I know you mean when you say with sorry sadness, “Daddy, the roads are too smooth here. Everything’s too perfect. I’d rather be in a place where the roads are bumpy but more interesting.”

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