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 […]
We have a limited democracy around here Read More »
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.
They’re everywhere Read More »
(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.
Light and darkness on screen Read More »
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.
So grab death and scream “Mine!” And what does it turn into? Read More »
(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.
Grab death and scream “mine!” And what does it turn into? Read More »
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
I’m under 11. I can play. No, really. Read More »
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
Friends and family Read More »
(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?
Hello, democracy? This is Africa calling. Again. Read More »
