Travel

It’s Monday morning coffee at the kids’ school, a privileged school if for no other reason than it sits in the middle of Africa’s sunshine and offers parents morning coffee. I wonder aloud about sending the kids to Washington. Snow, you know, is healthy for kids, and so is the bitter cold, and the snowier […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, November 7, 2015) ISTANBUL, Turkey ✦ This starts in Hamilton where I was driving to my local polling station amidst dead leaves blowing everywhere, as hard as the winds of political change. It was the first time in 14 years I was around in the fall to see the trees lose their lifeblood, a moment in time, even as we all, after our simple X on a paper put in a cardboard box, watched change blow into Ottawa.

I’m back in Africa. But let’s go back just a few days. Hey, there’s a guy balancing four wine glasses, full, on top of each other, on his head. Everyone laughs. And cheers. That is one enormous and flat head. This, on an old cobblestone road in front of the Hotel Sultana, an otherwise non-descript […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 27, 2015) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ My youngest daughter, Hannah, is a cool girl who loves water, makes friends easily and puts lots of maple syrup on her pancakes. She laughs more than I do, often from a deep and hearty place. She likes the fact that her name – which in the original Hebrew means “gracious” or “God’s gift to the world” – is spelled the same forwards and back. Canada is cool too. It makes fine maple syrup and, as far as countries go, laughs more than many.

We’re  on the 6.46 am  train from Salzburg to Munich, somewhere near the German-Austrian border, with Bavarian countryside and snowy Alps and children curled up and asleep, The Children’s Mother nodding off too, a couple of days to go in this family holiday, this, what has turned into an annual European respite while returning to Canada from Africa. […]

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.”

So, upon my recent arrival back in Uganda after my Canadian visit for this, I was greeted with the good news that the children still had all their limbs attached, which, in such a longer absenteeism, is as realistic a hope as any to have. Of course, I gave them some gifts and this included some Turkish Delight, that enchanted […]

He was a man, youngish, well, certainly not all that old even if he had a beard that put some years on him. For one reason or another, he had come a long way, halfway across the country, thousands of kilometres, in his black pick-up truck. And then, finally, he stood there at the front door […]

(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.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, July 19, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was in the whirlpool at the Les Chater Y when I was congratulated for My Bride’s recent naming into the Order of Canada. The woman, another early-morning swimmer, had read the news in this publication. “Let’s face it,” she said. “You’ve had a role to play in this all. Any woman who wins something like this has to be married to a certain sort of man. If Madame Curie hadn’t been married to Pierre, she’d have been forced to be home barefoot, baking bread.”

Something from the other side of this blog, from thomasfroese.com, this commentary here, or below, originally published in Christian Week, some thoughts from Paris, from the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It’s one of the world’s most remarkable graveyards, a solemn place that we as a family recently took some time for on our way home from Africa. + Known by our […]

It’s Entebbe, Uganda’s port of entry and departure, and we’re almost on a plane over the ocean and back to our home, the one where you can’t wear a t-shirt outside during this time of year. And on the table in front of me is an African news magazine with a picture of Nelson Mandela, […]

My Bride has just finished her address to some hundreds at this conference near Seoul, 10,000 km from home and the kids. It will be my turn later. We’re in the company of a couple of senior Korean doctors. Both are legendary in the Korean medical world. The younger one, a thin-faced 91-year-old, likes to […]

So, we sold the kids to go to Korea. Don’t know what that means for a blog called The Daily Dad, but it can’t be good. My Bride and I are invited to speak at a medical missions conference – she’s a keynote, I’m an addendum – by a Korean doc colleague we worked with […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, August 17, 2013) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It’s a strange world, especially here on what is, for all I know, my deathbed. It’s malaria and I’m dreaming. Or maybe in the fight of it I’m actually hallucinating. I see a friend, a writing mentor, a bear of a man, the sort you can disappear into when he hugs you. He’s an American who’s never been to Africa, no not once. But he’s somehow made it over the ocean and through the walls to kneel at my Ugandan bedside. ­“What are you doing here?” I ask. “I’m praying for you.”