Recent Columns

ATHENS ✦ I'll never forget the unknown boy and his horrible end, not any more than I'll forget Arash and his eyes on the day we met when the waters of the Mediterranean were cold.

So, it’s Day 5 of our official return to our own home, Day 4 of the kids’ return to school, that is their Canadian school, this, their annual routine here in Hamilton for the next couple of months. Of course, this is long enough to get new clothes (thank God for mothers willing to do […]

It was the other day, since my family’s recent return to Canada, and I was on the massage table (I’ve had a bad back for 30 years), and we were talking about her husband. He has MS and it isn’t getting any better and soon, with the help of some friends, she and he and […]

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, April 22, 2016) BRUSSELS-ZAVENTUM AIRPORT ✦ Once upon a time (otherwise known as "the old days,") people would watch news on their old televisions, or listen on their old radios, or pick up old newspapers that even landed on their front porches (remember front porches?) with a thud.

So, we, the five of us, have been out of Africa for a bit, and taking the long way home to Hamilton, and are now in the United Kingdom, specifically in Stratford Upon Avon. Diana, (yes, like the mother of Prince William), is our B&B host and it’s breakfast and she tells us with a […]

Okay, (still catching up here from last time), speaking of watching movies in Uganda, which we were recently with this latest Joseph Fiennes movie, I can report two other things. One relates to the new, (sort of new in Uganda, anyway), Star Wars movie. One is that, similarly to our movie experience in Yemen, around here […]

We’re taking the long way home. Through the UK. More to follow. Before this, through Athens. More to follow from here also. And before this, transiting through Brussels airport. Yes, that Brussels airport. And sure, more to follow from this (now) well-known spot as well. But first, it’s the pool, our final good-bye to Uganda […]

It’s dinner. The vote goes in the kids’ favour for what DVD we will watch this evening. (Dad’s latest find, a biography on Rich Mullins, will wait another night for, uh, Laura Ingills and company.) “Thank God for whoever invented democracy,” says Jon. “The Greeks did,” I noted. (More on this soon: some news from […]

It’s not yet breakfast and I catch Child #1.  I bend over to her ear. “I have a secret,” I say. “What is it?” she says. I whisper in her ear. “They’re everywhere.” She smiles. Shortly later, I do the same with Child #2, the boy. The same whisper in the ear. “They’re everywhere.” Smile. […]

(The New Vision – Tuesday, March 22, 2016) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It’s the foolish things of this world that can shame the wise and the weak that can upend the strong. This is how it was put a couple of millennia ago by the apostle Paul when he foreshadowed this great reversal, this deep sorting out that will be known only fully in the hereafter. But it’s the story-tellers in the here-and-now who often say the very same thing, and you’d have to be blind or deaf or both not to see it in the new Star Wars movie, “Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” which recently made it here to Uganda.

It’s bedtime. Liz needs to get to the kitchen to make her snack for the next day. “Dad!” she says. “I’m afraid to go out there. Something’s there. I can feel it in my bones!” “That’s arthritis.” + But, really, it’s the kids who often come up with the most though-provoking comments. Sometimes they’re funny. […]

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 19, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was getting late and she, my 12-year-old, sat on the couch and looked into the nothingness and pulled from the air a comment as plain and profound as any. "You know," she said, "People don't know how good they have it." This is what happens when you live in Africa. You see things. Life. People. Suffering. Death sometimes. You get perspective. "They don't know," Liz said. "People don't know." Canadians don't know. This is what she said.

When it’s all over (this two-lives-for-the-price-of-one business, this travel and observing and returning home, then leaving again and looking more and writing at least some of it down), it’s the traffic that I will miss the least. Of all the dangers and perceived dangers of the developing world that were ruminated on to the point […]

It was this morning and we had just left the kids at school. And we (my cousin and her husband, along with my wife’s cousin — the three of them visiting from Canada) were at the club, in the entranceway going in, and he (a Swiss gentleman living in Uganda) was, by chance, coming down […]

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 3, 2016) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Is this you? Democracy? It's me, Africa, calling. Can we talk? About us? About our relationship? I mean, are you still interested?