Hamilton Spectator Archives – Page 27 of 42

A place called ‘Baby Cottage’

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 14, 2013 / 2013, African culture, childhood, children, human rights, orphans, Ugandan orphans / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 31, 2013)

JINJA, UGANDA ✦ It’s Monday and we’re on the road early, dressed up, driving the 90 minutes down a dangerous road, the road that we won’t drive at night anymore because we fear it may kill us.

We arrive at the court in Jinja, a relaxed beach-town on Lake Victoria, to finally be told ‘Yes. Yes, everything is in order and the court is satisfied, and Hannah will never have any family outside of yours, the family she clearly belongs in.’

Hannah is the Ugandan girl who’s been in our home for almost four years now. We just need the final stamp of court approval to make her adoption official.

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Of grace, forgiveness and tears

4 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / March 30, 2013 / 2013, African culture, African university life, Christianity, Easter, global violence, Jesus Christ, Jesus' humanity, spirituality, suffering, violence in Africa / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 30, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ I’m the odd man out in a loose circle in the campus home of the university president talking about God’s grace, an unsurprising discussion because, besides being a university and my own family’s home, this is a nearly century-old theological training centre.

The horrible news of late is the roadside murder of a young law student, John Otim, beaten dead with an iron bar for money that he didn’t even have.

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Will Barack Obama come to Africa?

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / February 16, 2013 / 2013, African culture, African politics, Barack Obama, Barack Obama and Africa, democracy in Africa, East-West relations, free elections, human rights, Kenya, Kenyan 2013 election, US President Barack Obama / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 16, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was YouTube and it was Barack Obama talking to the neighbours in Kenya. You may have heard that they’re about to vote.

The last time the Kenyans did this, six years ago, 1,000 lay dead on the bloody streets. Another 600,000 were displaced, including here to Uganda where UN shelters near the airport are still up.

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Here is Africa. Don’t be afraid

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / January 25, 2013 / 2013, African culture, African politics, African university life, corruption, East-West relations, foreign aid, poverty, thievery / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, January 25, 2013)

ARUSHA, TANSANIA ✦ Edward should be fired. I can’t trust Alice. And our piano and laptop won’t resurface any more than anyone will know what happened to that $13 million.

This is how it’s going around here.

Not right here, actually. I’m on business one country over, just southeast from my home in Uganda. At the moment I’m drinking a cider of sorts, what the gentleman beside me called ‘rotten apples,’ a pretty good name, I think, for my recent experiences.

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Once, there was a poor, young girl …

2 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns, Popular / December 15, 2012 / 2012, African culture, childhood, children, Christianity, Christmas, Froese biography, Jesus Christ, Mary, poverty, spirituality, suffering, Women's rights / 4 minutes of reading

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Once there was a little Ugandan girl who loved school.

The girl, who had been an orphan when she was younger, loved learning new things and making new friends and pretty well everything about it, especially the stories.

Maybe she loved school all the more because of her years as an orphan, which started in a hospital in Mbarara, in western Uganda, where she was left abandoned when she was barely larger than a cat.

There she was given all she ever owned, her name, Hannah.

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Where words, mere words, mean trouble

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / November 3, 2012 / 2012, African culture, African politics, David Cecil, East-West relations, gay rights, homosexuality, human rights, suffering, Uganda, Ugandan art and politics, Ugandan politics / 4 minutes of reading

The official charge is ignoring orders of a public official. But the real problem is words. Just words.

You know, words can be enough. Too much, even, when they say this and that; when they’re relevant and lacerating; when they’re passed to others and speak more than anyone even realizes; when they speak truth that isn’t just truth to be understood, but that deeper truth that causes a lump in your throat because you know someone has experienced it with some amount of pain.

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Back-to-school time — in Uganda

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / September 13, 2012 / 2012, childhood, education, travel / 4 minutes of reading

We’re in the air again, my family and me and today’s newspaper.

This time it’s the Daily Telegraph, dominated on Page 14 by a large ad for the latest iPad. Beside it, a smaller story on how one in four U.K. teachers wouldn’t send their own kids to the schools they teach in. And below, a brief about a Pediatrics Journal study that shows obese youth don’t think so well.

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New hope not to become a moron

1 Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / August 4, 2012 / 2012, education, Froese biography, satire, travel, vocation / 4 minutes of reading

SANTA FE, N.M. I’m in America’s oldest state capital, in Café Olé, with a sandwich and drink and new hope to never become a moron.

Here for some postgrad studies, I’m also enjoying a recent copy of America’s satirical news tabloid, The Onion.

“Nation’s Morons March on Washington State,” is its banner headline. Thousands of morons, the Onion reports, recently marched in Washington State thinking they were actually in Washington, D.C.

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