Hamilton Spectator

Two weeks into my new life in Uganda, I'm quickly learning how precarious life can be when living with the threat of infectious diseases.

Maybe Labour Day should be replaced with Bum Day says our resident traveller.

Women and children, in New Orleans or the Third World, often suffer the most in disasters.

Good friends, a hospital tragedy, and a lack of toilet paper in public washrooms.

The western and Islamic worlds clearly don’t understand one another, as the botched Newsweek report on the Koran clearly shows.

Clearly the marriage gods were telling me something. Your marriage is something very noble. Don’t blow it. Because, yes, it also has the potential to burst into flames.

It not only returns life to its natural pace, but the bicycle is the great leveller.

In Uganda, the land has uncommon beauty, and life has its own strange mix of dark memories of killings, talk of restorative justice, and forgiveness.

Booming, oil-rich city is luring outsiders. That s likely why it feels so hollow.

The feet of ‘ragged men’, Vincent Van Gogh and the story of the prodigal son all come to mind as Easter dawns in Yemen.

Daniel Pearl and Walid al-Saqqaf would have enjoyed furthering Muslim-Jewish dialogue in, say, some juice bar in Tehran with Bob Dylan playing.

I treat most things said here in Yemen about Jews with skepticism. The latest gem came from a Yemeni colleague ranting, in an unpublished column, about the so-called Jewish conspiracy. He cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, purportedly Jewish texts from the late 1800s, describing Jewish plans to enslave the world.

Chronic illiteracy in Yemen reflects the belief that teaching a woman to read will empower her at the expense of men.

We’ll never know why some parts of the human family get more than their share of natural disasters such as tsunamis.

Merry Christmas, don't get too busy, and remember: don't eat too many cookies, because you still have to get around next year.