Recent Columns

OK, so what if Chicken Little was right? Chicken Little is that bird who got hit on the head by a falling acorn and then ran around screaming "The sky is falling!" He got all his forest friends in an alarmist tizzy and, on their way to tell the king, they were summarily fooled and eaten by that Foxy Loxy.

While here in the heart of Africa, I think of Canada often. Fall is no exception.

An early-summer highlight of mine was this comment from a gentleman who stopped me in a London, Ontario church to say, "You know, your book cost me $4,000."

It's hard to know most days what might go through the mind of any three-year-old, let alone an orphan from Africa.

If I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today, it's this: Look forward with great hope to the day you marry and have children.

"You're such a Dad-Dad." This phrase, a recent favourite of my three-year-old Jon, has reminded me anew that there's nothing like fatherhood.

KAMPALA, UGANDA – "The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things." From Lewis Carroll's nonsense verse "The Walrus and the Carpenter," this is what comes to mind when I read the newspapers here. Is the world getting madder?

Is it the global credit crisis? Is it the evil that lurks? Or is the world just getting madder? Whatever the cause, there’s a spike in ritual murders in this impoverished African country.

So it's that time of year when all of our New Year resolutions aren't yet broken. Among mine is to get into jail more often.

Her name is Fatmata. She is an African mother. And this is her story.

KAMPALA, Uganda✦ So you think you feel good about what unfolded south of Canada’s border on Nov. 4? You should see the party in Africa. There has been dancing in the streets, public holidays and general high-fives from nationals to diplomats to expatriates, all convinced that, as one Ugandan paper put it, “America is reborn.”

I discovered that this hugely popular novel, with sales now somewhere around a million, has caused a tempest in our community. And it's left me wondering: is it just me, or is something fundamentally and horribly amiss in our courtyard?

Recently travelling back from Canada to Uganda through London, England - capital of history's most influential empire - I got some renewed perspective on global leadership and change and how, in politics, there's nothing like old-fashioned fear to move things along.

We're in the middle of East Africa's savannah, about to be eaten by nearby lions.

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦A pregnant woman here in Uganda’s capital was recently beheaded by her husband. Maurine Ampire, 38, was a mother getting close to delivering number six. It’s one picture of life here, and a comparable image to the lack of voice that pregnant women have worldwide. No voice. No choice. Just death, and often violently.