Our Ugandan home

It’s been a mad dash these days to pack up the house – again – for our annual return to Uganda. The plane flies this holiday weekend. One of the cats at our African home – she was a kitten not long ago – has apparently given birth in our absence. We’ve been sent video […]

Getting married, not to mention being a journalist, in Africa has its cultural quirks, and dangers, as evidenced by the recent strange death of journalist Godwin Chepkurgor, who was apparently just killed by a herd of bull elephants while on assignment for a Kenyan publication. This sort of thing happens in Africa once in a […]

Once there was a dad who, every morning on the way to school, would pray for safety on the road. He was in a foreign country and the driving was the most dangerous part. Sometimes he’d even pray at other times of the day, ‘God, just keep me alive in this place for the sake […]

The thing about winning Gold in an Olympic event over and over and over and (YAWN) over is that you might start to assume that it’s your birthright, which, I suppose, this one, uh, kid, with the red shirt thinks. You forget all the work involved and your belly gets flabby and you won’t want to even walk the dog […]

Here’s the deal. Africa isn’t really the biggest place on the hockey map. I know you find this hard to imagine. But I’m working on it all. In fact, I see no reason why Uganda can’t have an Olympic hockey team for the 2018 Games, and if you read the Hamilton Spectator (which, if you […]

My Bride is out of country – in Ghana – for a few days for some Save the Mothers work which means I’m talking to The Cat again, not to mention statues, flowers, my dinner plate and anything else with a listening ear. But The Cat. God help The Cat. The Cat, some of you […]

It’s early morning and I’m out with the dog and he barks and chases a monkey and this is just the start of another routine day in Africa. I’m thinking about it, too, the sad news of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. A father of three, like myself, he was also virtually my age. […]

Monday afternoon Work. Eat lunch. Salad. From a Kampala restaurant. Seemed okay. At school, sit down for rest on stairs while getting kids. Nausea. Liz, do you still have some TP in the car? Drive home. Call Babe. Babe, I’ve been hit by something. Can’t get any milk, I say. Stop at gas station. No energy. […]

Me: “Good morning Captain Underpants!” Kid 1: “Morning Dad.” Kiss. ++ Me: “Hey Little Lady!” Kid 2: “Hi Dad.” Neck snuggle. ++ Me: “Good morning Pretty Girl!” Kid 3: “Uhhh.” Kiss (attempt). ++ Me: “Babe, you’re such a better surgeon that I am. Any way you could fix my watch band with some Crazy Glue?” […]

I don’t know how we get on these enlightening talks at the dinner table, but the other day we – the kids and Mom and I – got onto hell. Yes, hell, home of Satan. You know, Satan, the entity who prowls around the earth looking to wreak one sort of havoc or another. (Not […]

We arrived at the chapel to find Timothy’s casket sitting heavy at the entrance. This, yesterday morning when we had walked down the familiar green hill to the chapel, the university chapel of dark wood and century-old brick, a place the children have known as Sunday school for some years, a place now to say […]

So, it’s Day 15 of Single Daddin It’ and we’re at the dinner table, that place of ever-illuminating discussion, and Jon blurts out, ‘Hey Dad, if you got shot, would you rather be shot in the mouth or in the eye?’ I looked up from my Kraft Dinner and hotdogs. I mean, really, has it […]

The family news of the day is that it was Halloween and the kids – a gaggle of expatriates living on campus – came to the door of our Ugandan university home like kids do in so many parts of the world. The executioner, when I asked him what the “trick” was if I didn’t […]

It’s morning in Africa and, as often, today started with reading and listening to Brahms while on the cross-trainer and enjoying the brightness of the day’s creation. And here the creation is now Zack, our new Young Dog, plus four new rabbits from Sam and his significant other, plus Bilbo, The Cat’s Girlfriend, so named […]

It was a father-son weekend away of climbing and water and sports and night fires and running around a small island on the Nile River in the countryside of Uganda. And one of the boys stood by a swamp and held up some mud like it was a trophy, and then another boy said something […]