African Culture

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.

  In November 2014 I returned from my African home to speak at the Hamilton Convention Centre on the theme of The Nature of Peace. This was on the invitation of the YMCA of Hamilton-Burlington-Brantford, which holds an annual Peace Medal Breakfast to honour the people of Hamilton region who work towards peace. Following is […]

(Christian Week, February 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ “Love is better than wine,” is how the writer of the Song of Songs put it. “Love is stronger than death.” Solomon, said to be the wisest of men ever, is credited with the words that resonate with meaning even now, almost 3,000 years later, even in our time, as insecure and fickle an age as any.

This the fifth of several excerpts from an address I gave in Hamilton, Canada in November 2014. Excerpt #1 is here and #2 is here and #3 is here and #4 is here. + If nothing else, when we cross borders we’ll be misunderstood. I remember once we had some Canadian visitors in Uganda and they needed […]

This leads to the real good news, which is you. You’re the good news. You’re the nature of peace, created in God’s image, just a lower than the angels. You’re doing all sorts of things to promote and cultivate peace. You’re working against this natural tendency for war. Congratulations again, nominees and winners. And how are you doing this? Are you just gathering together to hold hands and sing Kumbaya? No, you’re imagining a better world. You’re picturing it. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, September 27, 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Back in Africa, I’m not overly worried about Ebola on the other side of the continent or even al-Shabab terror cells like the one just busted in a slum here in Uganda’s capital – 19 Somalian suspects were arrested. I’m worried more about my underwear. They could soon all be taken by my daughter and her cats.

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ You’ve worked hard for this your whole life, this, your university career, your education and future, your dreams of a better life. Then it happened. You made a mistake. Now you’re pregnant. You’re pregnant while at a religious university. You know what happens next. You get thrown out. Everything will be gone. Your hard-earned tuition and your honour and your hope for tomorrow too, all lost. So you got that abortion.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, March 15, 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦Fear is a strange thing, which is why it’s so hard to look into the eyes of another human being that you’re about to gas or bomb or, in the case of Uganda’s gays, throw to the lions. This is also why President Yoweri Museveni recently refused to meet with Uganda’s gay community – there were repeated requests – before signing Uganda’s infamous anti-gay law. The new law means even touching with the intent of a homosexual act – try to prove or disprove this one – will get you seven years. Short of jail, a life-sentence for a single homosexual act, there’s obviously also a new chill on the street here.