It was to be a national holiday celebration but the announcement about a Belgian official’s visit for the occasion came as a surprise to everyone in the large Nyankunde community. This is situated in a fertile plain and at the edge of the tropical Congolese jungle. In 1952, the large hospital compound was operated by a Canadian benevolent organization. The medical director, lovingly known to everyone as Doctor Bob, was a highly regarded physician. Trained at the University of Toronto, he was respected by foreign professionals, locally trained staff and Congolese nationals as well as the Belgian colonizers. To the East of the hospital were the busy elementary and high…

From infancy I was surrounded by my mother’s storytelling. During the dreary, dry depression years she translated her own rich reading into children’s language. We were often sitting on the floor around her while she retold melodramatic stories of the Napoleonic wars, or of families in poverty or of Bobbie who grew up in prewar rural Germany and accompanied his parents to the overwhelming  World’s Fair in Berlin. We shared Bobbie’s excitement and we were frightened when he was lost in the big city. We were relieved when the policeman found him watched over him until his parents jubilantly appeared to claim him and take him back to his country…

Excitement was mounting around the prairie church and in the prairie community: old fashioned revival meetings were coming to town. The caravan of semi-trailers, with large painted signs emblazoned with crosses and the words “Tent Revivals” arrived at the large empty space on the fringes of the town.  Immediately after school we rushed to the site, watched as three huge wooden tent poles were anchored to the ground, cables were stretched and fastened, and massive sheets of canvas were manhandled onto the cables and secured to the poles. Backless benches were placed in rigid rows. Sheets of plywood emerged out of the trucks, piece by piece, and were assembled into…

It was to be a national holiday celebration but the announcement about a Belgian official’s visit for the occasion came as a surprise to everyone in the large Nyankunde community. This is situated in a fertile plain and at the edge of the tropical Congolese jungle. In 1952, the large hospital compound was operated by a Canadian benevolent organization. The medical director, lovingly known to everyone as Doctor Bob, was a highly regarded physician. Trained at the University of Toronto, he was respected by foreign professionals, locally trained staff and Congolese nationals as well as the Belgian colonizers. To the East of the hospital were the busy elementary and high…

From infancy I was surrounded by my mother’s storytelling. During the dreary, dry depression years she translated her own rich reading into children’s language. We were often sitting on the floor around her while she retold melodramatic stories of the Napoleonic wars, or of families in poverty or of Bobbie who grew up in prewar rural Germany and accompanied his parents to the overwhelming  World’s Fair in Berlin. We shared Bobbie’s excitement and we were frightened when he was lost in the big city. We were relieved when the policeman found him watched over him until his parents jubilantly appeared to claim him and take him back to his country…

Excitement was mounting around the prairie church and in the prairie community: old fashioned revival meetings were coming to town. The caravan of semi-trailers, with large painted signs emblazoned with crosses and the words “Tent Revivals” arrived at the large empty space on the fringes of the town.  Immediately after school we rushed to the site, watched as three huge wooden tent poles were anchored to the ground, cables were stretched and fastened, and massive sheets of canvas were manhandled onto the cables and secured to the poles. Backless benches were placed in rigid rows. Sheets of plywood emerged out of the trucks, piece by piece, and were assembled into…

It was to be a national holiday celebration but the announcement about a Belgian official’s visit for the occasion came as a surprise to everyone in the large Nyankunde community. This is situated in a fertile plain and at the edge of the tropical Congolese jungle. In 1952, the large hospital compound was operated by a Canadian benevolent organization. The medical director, lovingly known to everyone as Doctor Bob, was a highly regarded physician. Trained at the University of Toronto, he was respected by foreign professionals, locally trained staff and Congolese nationals as well as the Belgian colonizers. To the East of the hospital were the busy elementary and high…

From infancy I was surrounded by my mother’s storytelling. During the dreary, dry depression years she translated her own rich reading into children’s language. We were often sitting on the floor around her while she retold melodramatic stories of the Napoleonic wars, or of families in poverty or of Bobbie who grew up in prewar rural Germany and accompanied his parents to the overwhelming  World’s Fair in Berlin. We shared Bobbie’s excitement and we were frightened when he was lost in the big city. We were relieved when the policeman found him watched over him until his parents jubilantly appeared to claim him and take him back to his country…

Excitement was mounting around the prairie church and in the prairie community: old fashioned revival meetings were coming to town. The caravan of semi-trailers, with large painted signs emblazoned with crosses and the words “Tent Revivals” arrived at the large empty space on the fringes of the town.  Immediately after school we rushed to the site, watched as three huge wooden tent poles were anchored to the ground, cables were stretched and fastened, and massive sheets of canvas were manhandled onto the cables and secured to the poles. Backless benches were placed in rigid rows. Sheets of plywood emerged out of the trucks, piece by piece, and were assembled into…