Our Ugandan home

It’s Saturday morning in Africa and some of us, jet-lagged, are sleeping in. At least to the extent that’s possible around here. Hannah opens the front door and yells out, “It’s time for breakfast!” She’s yelling to her brother, who is with his best friend, a boy from school who, last night, had his first […]

So, after some months in our Canadian home, we’re back in Africa. The commute over the Atlantic was non-eventful with the exception of two notes. One is the passing of Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and so-called “poet-laureate of medicine,” a man rich in words and spirit, both. I saw the report on the BBC somewhere […]

We’re on a front porch in Sewickley, PA, an idyllic place of mature trees and century homes, a town as similar to Dundas, Ontario as you might imagine, here on the edge of Pittsburgh, a city you’d also be forgiven for confusing with Hamilton. Both have that rugged steel history around a fine waterfront and remarkable […]

The best time to talk to your nine-year-old boy about women’s plumbing and these sorts of sexually delicate territories is when he’s asleep. This is what every trying father discovers after said boy lays splayed on the living room floor pretending he’s having a baby. Yes, my son Jon was in obvious pain – it seems no epidural […]

He’s a father I’ve known for some years, a lawyer, a father of two boys and two girls. On his way out, leaving for good, he handed me a book I had once lent him – Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner. I said no, keep it as a gift, please, let me sign it for you. I […]

She was Swiss and she stood at the front door this morning and told me how envious she was of my family’s set-up at the university compound we call home. I nodded. She had just driven the hour from her house in Kampala to drop off her daughter to play with Hannah when we talked […]

Some days I wish I was more musical, at least as musical as the rest of the family. I think the dog wishes the same for himself. Sensing this, yesterday I let Zack listen to Handel on my i-pod. It was Handel’s Concerti Grossi Op 3. I held the buds in his big German Shepherd dog ears. He […]

It was last evening. “Dad,” she said. “Can I hold the leash?” “No.” “Please,” she said. “No.” Zack, our big-as-a house German Shepherd, has been a little disobedient on his walks lately, chasing the monkeys and whatnot. Liz wouldn’t be able to hold him. “Zack has given even Mum a hard time lately,” I said. “You […]

“Daddy, it’s The Giver!” Liz said when we found the DVD for a thousand shillings, about 40 Canadian cents, at a hole-in-the-wall movie stand across the road from the edge of the university. At home, we saw it even worked, never a guarantee with these sorts of Ugandan movie outlets. For those not familiar with […]

Next time we have Nutella — a food item I allow my children to eat every 6th Monday of the month – we will have a moment of silence. This is to mark the rich contribution made by Michele Ferrero, the inventor of Nutella, who died this week. And not just Nutella, friends, but Kinder […]

When you’re an 11-year-old and a boy in your class asks you to go out and it’s the day before Valentine’s Day and he even gives you a rose, what’s a girl to do? This was the situation yesterday for Liz. Of course, it takes great courage for a boy to muster all it takes […]

It’s a beautiful morning in Africa, not just because the sun is rising and the birds are singing and the monkeys jumping, but because my daughter too is singing. She has been working on this piece for weeks – it’s an Adele song – and I will never tire of hearing it because there’s a […]

This is from Peter, a Ugandan music teacher explaining one of his first interactions with his future bride-to-be. These two youngish Ugandans were around our dinner table last night. Their initial conversation went like this: Her: Do you remember my name? Him: No. Her: What kind of teacher are you that you don’t remember your […]

Here, or below, we’re continuing on the theme of The Nature of Peace, this the fourth 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. But first, about the kids. + Liz gets a phone call from a friend. […]

Here, or below, we’re continuing on the theme of The Nature of Peace, this the third of several excerpts from an address I gave in Hamilton, Canada in November 2014. Excerpt #1 is here and #2 is here. But first, this brief conversation: Dad: “And, guys, whenever you feel down about school, just remember, you only […]