Whatever happens, happens for the best as long as you’re positive. You are walking down this road. Something good or bad can happen. If something bad happens, something good or bad can happen as a result. Whatever happens, happens for the best if you are positive. Being positive often leads to the road less traveled. […]
nature
This picture appeals to my sense of calm. In long hair and deep in the Amazon, I am staring at a world-class waterfall that just happened to be nearby. We threw baited hooks on strings into the river below, and within minutes caught a couple of 10 pounders. 30 meters away lies an unspoiled golden-sand […]
Freedom
FREEDOM: Because of my extensive travels, I am often asked what freedom means. To some it’s fighting for rights or to avoid loss of rights. To others it’s loss of a dear one fighting combined with loss of security To some it’s Stalin having the freedom to do anything he wants To others it’s […]
Individualism versus The Family
A battle is raging in the Western world between Individualism and the traditional family unit. The men have been the individuals in the past and the women have been the ones that have compromised their individuality to be the bearer and care giver to the children. Since WW2, when women went out into the workforce […]
Western Relationships: One Cup of Selfish
Lamu, Kenya “Western couples seemed chained – body and soul – to each other, and the older they got the stronger the chain. Africans, around since the dawn of civilization, didn’t appear to be coupled at all. Lamu, an exotic mostly Muslim island on the north east coast of Kenya, was not unlike the world […]
Family Responsibility
Kenya “Utterly alone on an Island, confronted by a giant eland with a scarred face protecting his herd of females and young, I got the message loud and clear. Slowly I looked around for the nearest tree, then I turned back to face him. We looked deeply into the other’s eyes. He was sizing me […]
Middle of Nowhere – Heart of Somewhere
Ssese Islands, Uganda “The middle of nowhere to us is the heart of somewhere to someone else.” Nowhere was that more true than during my travels in the Ssese islands. Trudging with fellow travellers through a primitive village in the dark of night to catch a tramp steamer to take us to Entebbe, those words […]
Women in Africa
By Train to Uganda. Out the window, women and girls weeded and tilled fields of maize. Mothers bent over at the hips with babies strapped to their backs. Their stomachs and faces parallel to the earth. Their hands in it. The apparent idleness of the men and boys made me wonder what my recently deceased […]
Slow Life Down and Listen
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Rayford, a twenty-six-year-old of Matabele descent, worked as an administrator for a local company. He was the only child of parents high in the political chain. Although English was Rayford’s second language, I was impressed by his fluency and grasp of nuance and idiom—American and British. Nevertheless, I constantly found myself interrupting or […]
The Fast Pace of Life: Busy people
Harare 1993 In Harare, Zimbabwe, I visited the luxurious home of a friend, a white businessman in his fifties. Thereafter, whites would become increasingly extinct in that country because of the goons that often take over after a revolution. But at that time, Brent worried most about his business and the lack of foreign investors […]