African culture Archives – Page 3 of 5

After Women’s Day, men … wake up!

2 Comments / New Vision, Newspaper columns / March 8, 2014 / 2014, African culture, human rights, International Women's Day, poverty, relationships, suffering, Women's rights / 5 minutes of reading

(The New Vision – Saturday, March 8, 2014)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s International Women’s Day and we’re all happy to celebrate women in Uganda and around the world, but the truth of the matter is that it’s the men who need to come to terms with who they are and why they’re around, or it’s all for nothing.

This is the strangeness of this big yearly celebration. Women’s Day largely revolves around the hard times women face because their men are so hopeless. Plenty of husbands and fathers don’t pull their weight and don’t understand or care how desperately their families need them.

Now I am not about to beat-up myself or my brothers everywhere because I have nothing better to do. The Daughters of Eve are just as fallen as the Sons of Adam. But have an honest look into the homes of Uganda. I’m imagining you see what I see. It’s a bloody mess.

After Women’s Day, men … wake up! Read More »

The long rollercoaster ride of one Ugandan adoption

2 Comments / New Vision, Newspaper columns / February 15, 2014 / 2014, African adoption, African culture, Froese family, Hannah Froese, maternal mortality, Ugandan adoption / 5 minutes of reading

(The New Vision – Saturday, February 15, 2014)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ There’s new joy in our Mukono home these days. Our Ugandan daughter, Hannah, is now legally in our family. She danced when we showed her the formal adoption paper.

This, after waiting more than 500 days. That’s five hundred. Welcome to the world of international adoptions where you need the patience of Job to slog through it all. Adopting a child, especially in Uganda, can be this much of a roller coaster ride.

In our case, we’re Canadians in Uganda since 2005. My wife and I met Hannah in 2009, when she was three, in a Jinja orphanage. When she was barely larger than a cat, she had been found abandoned in an Mbarara hospital. Her family? Unknown.

The long rollercoaster ride of one Ugandan adoption Read More »

What we can learn from Nelson Mandela about solitude

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / February 1, 2014 / 2014, African culture, African politics, Apartheid, meditation, Nelson Mandela, prison, solitude, South Africa, spirituality, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 1, 2014)

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

— From the poem Invictus

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Much has been made about the tremendous story from Africa that ended 2013, that of Nelson Mandela and the worldwide send-off he was given, and rightly so.

Mandela will be remembered as the embodiment of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus, that 19th-century verse describing a man who, as Henley put it, fell in the clutch of circumstance, who knew the bludgeonings of chance and bloody head, who found wrath and tears and horror, but through it all was unafraid and, in the end, “captain of his soul.”

Well over a month after Mandela’s death, his name is still easily spoken across Africa.

What we can learn from Nelson Mandela about solitude Read More »

When the poor come knocking

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 21, 2013 / 2013, African culture, deception, ethics, Mzungus, poverty, rich and poor, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(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.

When the poor come knocking Read More »

On anniversaries and a medley of “summer love”

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / July 29, 2013 / 2013, African culture, anniversaries, David and Jonathan, gay rights, homosexuality, love, summer love / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, July 26, 2013)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ Love has always been one of those loaded words, one that means everything and nothing at the same time because we can love the latest Bond movie or country music or summer rain, but this has nothing to do with summer love at, say, a July wedding, or the love that shows on the faces of a couple who have sailed through thick and thin.

This is what it was the other day, an anniversary of 55 years. The man smiled and looked me in the eye and told me that he knew from the first time he saw her. “She stepped off the train and I heard a voice: ‘This is the woman you’ll marry.’”

On anniversaries and a medley of “summer love” Read More »

Faraway home is where the heart is

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 15, 2013 / 2013, African culture, Canadian culture, Elizabeth Froese, Froese biography, homesickness, Third Culture kids / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 15, 2013)

It’s 10 years later, dear Elizabeth, and it’s true: Home is where your heart is. You’ve said it now in plain words. Your heart, with your imagination, is in our African home.

This is what I know you mean when you say with sorry sadness, “Daddy, the roads are too smooth here. Everything’s too perfect. I’d rather be in a place where the roads are bumpy but more interesting.”

Faraway home is where the heart is Read More »

A place called ‘Baby Cottage’

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 14, 2013 / 2013, African culture, childhood, children, human rights, orphans, Ugandan orphans / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 31, 2013)

JINJA, UGANDA ✦ It’s Monday and we’re on the road early, dressed up, driving the 90 minutes down a dangerous road, the road that we won’t drive at night anymore because we fear it may kill us.

We arrive at the court in Jinja, a relaxed beach-town on Lake Victoria, to finally be told ‘Yes. Yes, everything is in order and the court is satisfied, and Hannah will never have any family outside of yours, the family she clearly belongs in.’

Hannah is the Ugandan girl who’s been in our home for almost four years now. We just need the final stamp of court approval to make her adoption official.

A place called ‘Baby Cottage’ Read More »

Mourning in Uganda with a change of clothes

Leave a Comment / New Vision, Newspaper columns / April 15, 2013 / 2013, adoption, African culture, Black Monday, childhood, children, corruption, Froese family, orphanages, orphans, poverty, Ugandan orphans / 3 minutes of reading

(The New Vision Online – Monday, April 15, 2013)

JINJA, UGANDA ✦ It’s Monday morning and I sit in a Jinja café wearing a bright tie, blue shirt, navy blazer and brown pants, but I’m wishing I could start the day over and wear black from my neck to my feet, everything as black as the black in Uganda’s flag.

This, as I read the latest news report of Black Monday, the growing citizens campaign pointing out what we already know, that Ugandans need to mourn, to grieve, to be saddened for their deepening losses, losses from thefts of public funds that are key to the wellbeing of this nation.

Mourning in Uganda with a change of clothes Read More »