Recent Columns

The talk was this afternoon when I was getting my hair cut. It was on the same topic as it was at this morning’s coffee at my kids’ school. And the same as last night while with a friend outside our Ugandan house. It was about Uganda’s new anti-gay law. Last night, near the house, my 10-year-old daughter came up to […]

(The UCU Standard - Thursday, February 27, 2014) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Last time in this space we were talking about marriage, how good things come to those who wait, and about falling in love with our Creator, really, the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. I shared that I was 35 before I met my wife and how there was something to this, something mysterious and with joy, the sort that you can’t contrive because it comes from a deeper place inside but also somehow outside of you too.

The thing about winning Gold in an Olympic event over and over and over and (YAWN) over is that you might start to assume that it’s your birthright, which, I suppose, this one, uh, kid, with the red shirt thinks. You forget all the work involved and your belly gets flabby and you won’t want to even walk the dog […]

Here’s the deal. Africa isn’t really the biggest place on the hockey map. I know you find this hard to imagine. But I’m working on it all. In fact, I see no reason why Uganda can’t have an Olympic hockey team for the 2018 Games, and if you read the Hamilton Spectator (which, if you […]

Speaking of Valentine’s Day and happenings like this Best Marital Proposal Ever, maybe the only other thing to say is this. We think we’re in charge of our lives, and in a way we are. We’re in charge of what side of the bed we may get out of in the morning and what sort of […]

(The New Vision - Saturday, February 15, 2014) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ There’s new joy in our Mukono home these days. Our Ugandan daughter, Hannah, is now legally in our family. She danced when we showed her the formal adoption paper. This, after waiting more than 500 days. That’s five hundred. Welcome to the world of international adoptions where you need the patience of Job to slog through it all. Adopting a child, especially in Uganda, can be this much of a roller coaster ride. In our case, we’re Canadians in Uganda since 2005. My wife and I met Hannah in 2009, when she was three, in a Jinja orphanage. When she was barely larger than a cat, she had been found abandoned in an Mbarara hospital. Her family? Unknown.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, February 15, 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Okay, maybe it’s too late for Sochi, but I hope you haven’t forgotten about Olympic hockey in Africa. Yes, dear members of the International Olympic Committee, I’m before you to personally share the good news of a Ugandan ice-hockey team. Of course, in Canada nobody says “ice” before “hockey” because Canadians realize hockey’s natural state is with ice, even the frozen-pond variety. Uganda, on the other hand, is a place where some poor soul with a hockey stick in-hand might yell out, “We’re Manchester United!” before informing you that he’s a “striker.” But I’m working on this and I’m happy to report remarkable progress.

(The UCU Standard - Monday, February 3, 2014) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s soon Valentine’s Day and you’re alone. The flowers are out there and so is the wine, and much more. One would have to be blind and half-dead not to notice. But you’re alone, a rose in the parched dessert, and you don’t know how much longer you can hang on.

The latest in the ongoing affairs of the heart at my children’s school is that a boy who will remain nameless, one who has the hots for my daughter – and apparently there are several of these boys – asked Liz to be his date at the class Valentine’s Dance. This is being held for the kids at the end of […]

My Bride is out of country – in Ghana – for a few days for some Save the Mothers work which means I’m talking to The Cat again, not to mention statues, flowers, my dinner plate and anything else with a listening ear. But The Cat. God help The Cat. The Cat, some of you […]

It was Don Cherry on one of his Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Hockey videos, a Christmas gift brought back from Canada, and we were wondering about Don’s background and we researched that while his life was full of hockey, his formal education didn’t go past high school. “See,” said Liz. “Don Cherry didn’t get an […]

It’s early morning and I’m out with the dog and he barks and chases a monkey and this is just the start of another routine day in Africa. I’m thinking about it, too, the sad news of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. A father of three, like myself, he was also virtually my age. […]

(Christian Week - February 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ If you’re too busy to read this, just ignore it. I mean, really, I understand. We’re well into 2014 and there’s some serious new clinking and clanking that likely needs your attention. Yes, in our brave new distracted world, the one that never really turns off anymore, (I was recently in a funeral in Uganda where the cell phones rang and rang and rang), it’s a fresh year to slip further into it, this new place where it’s hard to know what – and who -- is real.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, February 1, 2014) It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. — From the poem Invictus KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Much has been made about the tremendous story from Africa that ended 2013, that of Nelson Mandela and the worldwide send-off he was given, and rightly so. Mandela will be remembered as the embodiment of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus, that 19th-century verse describing a man who, as Henley put it, fell in the clutch of circumstance, who knew the bludgeonings of chance and bloody head, who found wrath and tears and horror, but through it all was unafraid and, in the end, “captain of his soul.” Well over a month after Mandela’s death, his name is still easily spoken across Africa.

Monday afternoon Work. Eat lunch. Salad. From a Kampala restaurant. Seemed okay. At school, sit down for rest on stairs while getting kids. Nausea. Liz, do you still have some TP in the car? Drive home. Call Babe. Babe, I’ve been hit by something. Can’t get any milk, I say. Stop at gas station. No energy. […]