MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ So I’m back in this East African nation for a working visit. It’s also a good time to get myself unplugged. You know, rested and rebooted. The warm days and the warm people and the children help. If you visit (and why don’t you, sometime?) you’ll know what I mean. The children of the Nile,
The latest news from this corner is that my wallet, soggy and laden with earth beetles, was found in a neighbour’s rock garden. The phone call came.
“Are you Thomas Froese?”
“Yes.”
“I have your wallet.”
It was handed to me in a plastic bag. Hard to say if this is good news or bad. It’s like someone finding a body.
Andrew Thomas is the little boy who smiled and played with my hands the first time I met him outside the university guesthouse where, these days, I have my meals. There, from your side of the ocean, my own children, along with their mother, watched and said hello to Andrew through a video screen.
She’s the Ugandan girl who we left behind in a part of the world where, this weekend, there is no Father’s Day. And even if there was, this girl, our friend, has no father to honour on it.
So while it’s only suitable that so many fathers and children
(The UCU Standard – Monday, May 23, 2016)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was in Canada and we were at a campy lakeside retreat, and it was a beautiful summer day and a gaggle of children were playing outside the large window near where we ate.
My daughter, that is my adopted Ugandan daughter, Hannah, looked at me with a tear rolling down her cheek. I asked her what was the matter, and, looking down in shame, she said, “I’m the only black person here.”
(The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, January 4, 2016)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was evening and dark and dozens of voices, mostly African, by candlelight and under bright stars, were singing carols in front of our long-time East African home.
It was a moment to reflect on the days ending 2015, and a moment, also, when I was asked to say a word.
“So where does everyone go at Christmas?” I asked the kids more than anyone.
“Home!” they yelled into the night air.
(The New Vision – Saturday, December 12, 2015)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ She questioned if having the surgery was “God’s will,” but the truth is that she was afraid and misguided and besides her own safety, she was leaving her unborn child’s life to hang dangerously in the balance.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 5, 2015)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ I am not Catholic.
And, like you, I have my images of fatherhood.
The better ones have more to do with the holiness of, say, my boy with a ball and a catching glove on our sun-filled front lawn than with the Holy Father coming to visit.
