Recent Columns

So My Bride and I were on a date at the movies in Kampala and we were the only ones there, two shadows in a sea of empty seats, and not thinking anything of it because this is not uncommon. Not that movies are that bad here – although this one was and we ended […]

The family news of the day is that it was Halloween and the kids – a gaggle of expatriates living on campus – came to the door of our Ugandan university home like kids do in so many parts of the world. The executioner, when I asked him what the “trick” was if I didn’t […]

(The UCU Standard - Friday, November 1, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Suicide is a shabby and shameful business, something that nice people don’t get mixed up in, yet here they are, two suicides in our university family, two young people who in separate incidents have left us with nothing but a disturbing ‘good-bye.’

It’s morning in Africa and, as often, today started with reading and listening to Brahms while on the cross-trainer and enjoying the brightness of the day’s creation. And here the creation is now Zack, our new Young Dog, plus four new rabbits from Sam and his significant other, plus Bilbo, The Cat’s Girlfriend, so named […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Thursday, October 24, 2013) PANMUNJEOM, SOUTH KOREA ✦ We’re at the border of North and South Korea, at the planet’s hottest line in the sand, and the guard – a youth in military garb and dark sunglasses – tells my wife to change her footwear. She has open sandals and the North Koreans, even from a distance, might see her feet. Which shows that while war may be hell, it's strange too, certainly this pseudo-war at Panmunjeom, the UN’s demilitarized zone, the so-called DMZ separating these two Koreas, countries that stopped formal shooting 60 years ago but still without any treaty.

It was a father-son weekend away of climbing and water and sports and night fires and running around a small island on the Nile River in the countryside of Uganda. And one of the boys stood by a swamp and held up some mud like it was a trophy, and then another boy said something […]

So, what do you do when a poor man comes knocking at your front door and the kids are in their pyjamas and it’s really not a good time to do much of anything, but the story behind it all is so dramatic that you can’t ignore any of it for a second? This is […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Friday, September 20, 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was late and dark and unusual because the visitor lives hours away and I didn’t expect him. But he came anyway and sat at my front door and cried and told me all about it, how thieves had come the night before. He had been at church, he explained, at one of those all-night prayer services common in this part of Africa, when the rats did it, when they broke in and cleaned out his house. Clothing, furniture, cash I had recently given for his kids’ schooling, everything gone by sunrise.

I’ve been looking through the Parenting Manuel they gave when my oldest was born but I don’t see anything on what to do when she gets five, yes FIVE, boys professing their love for her. Liz is 10. ‘Daddy, daddy!’ is how it all started one day after school. ‘You’ll never guess what happened!’ Liz […]

I’m way too sexy for my underwear. Which is why I wear a Speedo into the pool. I expect the same from our new dog. We picked him up yesterday. His name is Zack, which, if you’re a thief, is short for Zack Attack. His birthday, as we’ve discovered, is on My Bride’s and my […]

The year was 1912 and the newspaper ad was from the London Times and it went like this: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return is doubtful.” This, from a more heroic age when men would bet everything they had, even their lives, on […]

My Bride and I are on a plane in a few hours flying back to the kids in Uganda, from Korea, this land of hand-helds and sliding doors, from the west side of Korea while a typhoon comes from the east, something our travel agent and the news have both warned us about. But our Korean […]

My Bride has just finished her address to some hundreds at this conference near Seoul, 10,000 km from home and the kids. It will be my turn later. We’re in the company of a couple of senior Korean doctors. Both are legendary in the Korean medical world. The younger one, a thin-faced 91-year-old, likes to […]

(Christian Week - October 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ The thing about marijuana is that it stinks up the joint and brings images of barefoot hippies and stoner movies and general rebellion, none of which is very attractive to the clean-cut religious crowd. The sorry thief on the cross? A pot smoker no doubt. Probably a dealer. But the times, they are a changin’.

So, we sold the kids to go to Korea. Don’t know what that means for a blog called The Daily Dad, but it can’t be good. My Bride and I are invited to speak at a medical missions conference – she’s a keynote, I’m an addendum – by a Korean doc colleague we worked with […]