She’s the Ugandan girl who we left behind in a part of the world where, this weekend, there is no Father’s Day. And even if there was, this girl, our friend, has no father to honour on it.
So while it’s only suitable that so many fathers and children
For Gloria, the fatherless girl we left behind Read More »
He’s a friend. A doctor. His name is Stuart. I stood at the front door of his home, my son beside me.
Stuart is the keeper of the children’s bicycles while we’re abroad. We swung by to make arrangements to get them. That’s all it was, an ordinary May evening. But the world was somehow different. Its axis had shifted. At least for Stuart.
He’d just returned from Queen’s Park, he informed me, with other doctors lobbying for a
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In sub-Saharan Africa they call childbirth “war.”
If you’re a woman about to deliver a child in that part of the world, this is your fate. Imagine it. You’re young. (Younger than most Canadians can imagine.) You’re poor. You’re alone.
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It was Shabbat, the Sabbath, Friday evening, and after a mad frenzy to close the markets and clean the strewn and tossed streets by 6 pm, everything got quiet.
This is when I saw them, an Orthodox Jewish father and his boy walking …
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I will miss the light of Africa as much as I will miss anything. I will miss the water too.
This, even as I’ll miss Africa itself, the birthplace of our youngest daughter, the place where the light shines so beautifully on her skin.
Returning to Hamilton, Ugandan treasure beside us Read More »
One day Adam woke up and looked around and the place was his.
He saw the animals. “Lion,” he said, in a manner of speaking. Then “lamb.” And so forth. They all had good relationships. They were at peace, lying around together. It was Eden.
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The original meaning “God be with ye” disappeared into the phrase “good-bye” long ago. But this is what I’m now left with, this long good-bye.
It’s a prayer as much as anything, this good-bye to Africa. These days I’m swimming in it …
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So I was recently sitting around doing nothing, an activity I’ve always found deeply satisfying, when I realized, “Hey, man, you’ve just written your 300th newspaper column.”
Next thing, my wife and kids were serving me cake …
On the road with the boda-boda, the Uber of Uganda Read More »
