Recent Columns

So I’m in front of Liz’s class – I think there were three classes put together actually – and we’re talking about the media and the hands are going up, up, up. One after another, the kids tell me about this story and that one. Fires in Australia – that’s the one Liz recently “reported” […]

We got home late but it wasn’t a school night so the children wanted to watch The Brady Bunch. Season 1 was a Christmas gift, one that follows last year’s main DVD take of The Flintstones. We have no television in our Ugandan home, so DVDs — some of which you can find here on […]

Of all the myths of parenthood, one of the biggest has to be that children can make you happy and fulfilled. This, from Leslie Leyland Fields, author of ‘Parenting Is Your Highest Calling (and 8 other myths that trap us in worry and guilt.)’ The title should give any parent some pause and relief. As […]

‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Liz could barely contain herself. I was reading. She was going up on her tip-toes, up and down, excited, reaching forward and touching me on the arms and Daddy, Daddy! She could get four earrings and two bracelets for 5,000 shillings. That’s about two dollars. The lady was selling all sorts of things, […]

I’m on the elliptical at the club and the news clip shows a bloody and ugly scene from yet another suicide bomber from one of those places that is and isn’t so far away. And there’s a man who stands out from the crowd, who somehow looks toward the camera, a bearded and rotund man […]

(The UCU Standard - Tuesday, January 14, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was the children. “Daddy, daddy,” they said, unable to sleep. “What if the thieves are still out there?” Yes, to add to the rotten tally of 2012, at year-end thieves stole our electric piano, the one my children loved. Six days later, thieves got my bride’s laptop plus valuables from her purse. Two violations in six days from inside our campus home. It took our breath away. Six days.

(The New Vision - Monday, January 14, 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ There are six of us around the table. We’re disturbed and talking about how to help. The place where we work and live and have friendships and worship with others is under attack. Through 2012, this place, an educational institution, became, as one Ugandan said, “a den of thieves.” Then the new year had barely arrived when a campus home was broken into and robbed while its Ugandan family slept.

Being popular and oatmeal don’t seem to have a lot in common. But you have to know Hannah. My daughter, the one who is as black and beautiful as the night sky, turned seven the other day. She opted for her party to be in her classroom, which isn’t so uncommon here in Uganda at the […]

So, they’re still at it, still after my son and asking for his hand in marriage – Agnes and Rainer – the two seven-year-old school girls who are flat out and deep into it, unable to control themselves because Jon, apparently, has everything that it takes. Faithful Reader will recall that the two girls both proposed […]

The photo, which had been shot for our engagement, has been on the wall of one home office or another: first the one in Yemen, and for some  years now, our work space here in Uganda. My Bride and I are on the shore Lake Erie, just outside of St. Thomas where, in another life, I was […]

Today’s Daily Dad directs you to this poignant piece about losing a father, by Cathleen Falsani, with an excerpt from the Magnificent Defeat by my writing hero, Frederick Buechner. Thank you Cathleen. http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/12/21/its-end-world-we-know-it-and-i-feel-peace

Speaking of returning to places that are good for the soul, the earth of my elementary school is one such place, one that I bring the kids to when we’re back home in Canada. It’s become an annual affair, a day trip every summer that the three have all joined me on, but one that […]

So we’re on a ferry going from Whidbey Island to the coast of Washington State. His name is Paul and he’s a writing colleague of mine, an American from Chicago who has the same name as my best friend when I was a boy. He and I are students studying an MFA in Creative Writing […]

(Cont’d from  yesterday) To finish the story of Gloria, the little Ugandan girl who is the thief –turned-family-friend, there’s not much more to say except that in the past days we have been robbed of items of far greater import than swimsuits and underwear. Twice. At Christmas in particular, thieves need to get on with […]

(Cont’d from yesterday) … So after spending the night at the precinct, the girls’ families were found and informed of their mischief. We thought this was more or less the end of it, until the one, Gloria, the little Ugandan girl who had previously just about tripped while running away with the stolen clothing falling […]