Hamilton Spectator

An open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper about maternal mortality.

In Berlin, both presidents had watershed moments, and both are revered.

OK, so what if Chicken Little was right? Chicken Little is that bird who got hit on the head by a falling acorn and then ran around screaming "The sky is falling!" He got all his forest friends in an alarmist tizzy and, on their way to tell the king, they were summarily fooled and eaten by that Foxy Loxy.

While here in the heart of Africa, I think of Canada often. Fall is no exception.

It's hard to know most days what might go through the mind of any three-year-old, let alone an orphan from Africa.

If I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today, it's this: Look forward with great hope to the day you marry and have children.

Is it the global credit crisis? Is it the evil that lurks? Or is the world just getting madder? Whatever the cause, there’s a spike in ritual murders in this impoverished African country.

KAMPALA, Uganda✦ So you think you feel good about what unfolded south of Canada’s border on Nov. 4? You should see the party in Africa. There has been dancing in the streets, public holidays and general high-fives from nationals to diplomats to expatriates, all convinced that, as one Ugandan paper put it, “America is reborn.”

We're in the middle of East Africa's savannah, about to be eaten by nearby lions.

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦A pregnant woman here in Uganda’s capital was recently beheaded by her husband. Maurine Ampire, 38, was a mother getting close to delivering number six. It’s one picture of life here, and a comparable image to the lack of voice that pregnant women have worldwide. No voice. No choice. Just death, and often violently.

A visitor in Uganda sees the light, through the tattered lives of those around him.

Re: ‘Taking the middle ground on evolution’ (letters, June 28)

If a tree falls deep in the heart of Africa, will anyone hear? That's the question for the outside world, as the debate that often pits the environment against the economy has taken a chilling twist here in Uganda, with riots, murder and parliamentarians jailed.

Piling up its international awards, The Last King of Scotland has come full circle, finally released in Uganda as a rare film experience, if not an unusual life-experience, where story and reality meld so much that it's hard to know where one begins and the other ends.

Somalia wants to move forward, but it has a horrifying past to deal with.