Yesterday’s post about Joel Wambi stirred memories of the 14 months I spent in Uganda. I travelled to the eastern Ugandan village of Nabugoye Hill in April 2009. In my life to that point, there had been almost no black people. As I approached Nabugoye, I wondered  what it would be like to be surrounded by black Africans.

But that wasn’t what first impressed me. What I saw were fellow Jews, living Jewish lives, keeping the sabbath, attending Shabbat services – just like me. I felt at home.

Home in this case was a sparsely furnished room in the new Abayudaya Guesthouse that had been built the previous year with funding from the San Francisco NGO Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue).

Before going to Uganda, I knew they didn’t need a journalist in a rural African village. So I took a course in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Greystone College in Vancouver. While most children in Uganda grow up speaking tribal languages at home, they are in most schools taught in English.

The Abayudaya – the word for Jews in the Luganda language – administer a primary school and a high school, where Jewish, Muslim and Christian students study. Another U.S. NGO, Kulanu (All of Us), has been instrumental in establishing and supporting the schools.

I taught English writing in both schools. At Hadassah Primary School – not related to the American women’s Zionist organization – I taught Grade 7 and the school’s teachers as well. At Semei Kakungulu High School, I was overwhelmed by marking the papers of 35 students. So I cherry-picked the top 12 and prepared them for the essay questions they would face in government exams.

Then I created spelling tests at the high school and chose the top students for a spelling team. They were inspired when I showed them the movie “Akeela and the Bee”, about a black girl in a poor middle school in Los Angeles who rises to become the top student speller in the U.S.

Our team practised endless lists of words and then we challenged two prestigious schools in Mbale, the district capital about 5 km (3 miles) away, to what may have been the first spelling bee in the country.

On the day of the Mbale Spelling Challenge, I hosted our team to lunch at the guesthouse and then we drove by minivan to Mbale Secondary School, a treat for the students who usually walked to town.

The spelling judges I recruited came up with a tough list of words. Our team struggled and came in third. Afterwards, all the contestants drank soft drinks provided by a local distributor and received certificates of participation. Every student also got a T-shirt from MTN, the top telecom in Uganda. The shirts promoted a service for youth with the slogan “Late chat 4 shizzle.” The irony of spelling students and their teacher to be wearing that didn’t hit me until much later.

Our students sang all the way back to the village. It had been a great day.

Explaining the rules of the Mbale Spelling Challenge.

Students enjoying soft drinks after the spelling bee.

Joel Wambi will be a Bar Mitzvah boy on Saturday, Jan. 23. He’s one of the Ugandan orphans whose education is supported by donations we receive at Chanting & Chocolate evenings and my Shabbat potluck dinners. We have enough money for his education expenses but not to pay for his Bar Mitzvah – new clothes and shoes, and food for the guests who will congregate at the main Abayudaya synagogue in the red-dirt village of Nabugoye Hill, where I lived six years ago.

We need $150 Canadian for Joel, which includes the fee to wire the money to his teacher, Shadrach Mugoya of Namutumba, about 70 km (43.5 miles) from Nabugoye. I’m hoping there may be an angel or two who might help us put this money together. This is my Paypal donation link. If more than enough is donated, the extra will help with the education of the five orphans we support.

Shadrach, who has been preparing Joel for his big day, is enrolled in the rabbinic ordination program of ALEPH, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, with which my synagogue, Or Shalom, is affiliated. Or Shalom has made Chanting & Chocolate and our initiative for the orphans an official project of the synagogue.

If you’re wondering about the Korean T-shirt Joel is wearing, Uganda gets used clothing from the developed world by the container load, which has devastated the domestic clothing industry. I was once surprised to see a young Ugandan in the market in Mbale, the district capital near Nabugoye, wearing a Vancouver Sun Run T-shirt.

My purple kippa (Jewish skullcap) was crocheted in Nabugoye during my time there. When Semei Kankangulu, a powerful Ugandan military chief,  first declared himself a Jew in 1919, 3,000 people followed him. They knew they were supposed to wear a head covering but, cut off from the outer Jewish world, they didn’t know what it was supposed to look like. Living in an area with many Muslims, they adopted the shape of a Muslim kufi, and added the Star of David and other symbols to make it Jewish.

This evening I wore mine at Jutta Kanuka’s wonderful kirtan (sacred chanting) in North Vancouver, where I drummed and led a few Hebrew chants. It’s held on the second Wednesday of every month. This Sunday, she’s leading Dances of Universal Peace, at 7 p.m. at Anne MacDonald Studio next to Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield Ave. in North Van. Contact Jutta at poppymoonlight@gmail.com for more information.

I love spiritual retreats. They’re an opportunity to rest, reflect and recharge, and Judaism has one built into every week – Shabbat. The Jewish sabbath begins at sundown Friday and lasts until sundown Saturday. I experience Shabbat in many sanctuaries.

A main sanctuary is my home. On Friday night, I hosted my regular 2nd Friday Shabbat Dinner, a monthly potluck. We sang blessings as we lit candles, held up a cup of sweet wine and tore off chunks of challah bread to dip in salt. We shared our food offerings, and lively conversations animated the dinner table. Afterwards, we sang sacred chants in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

Participants bring a $5 donation, which I add to the donations from Chanting & Chocolate. Together these funds support the education of five Abayudaya Jewish orphans in Uganda where I lived 2009-10.

This morning, I attended musical and soulful services in the sanctuary of my beloved Jewish Renewal community, Or Shalom, Vancouver’s East Side synagogue. They start at 10 a.m. and are largely led by members of the congregation. My focus on Shabbat morning is gratitude for the many blessings in my life. Our marvellous Rabbi, Hannah Dresner, is away at a conference, so this week services were entirely led by lay members, beginning with Charles Kaplan, continuing with Myrna Rabinowitz, leading to the Torah service led by Avi Dolgin, and the Torah discussion by Zelik Segal.

Our services are creative and egalitarian. Most of the service is sung. It feels like being in a choir as the congregation sings out enthusiastically, often with rich harmonies.

After services, I drove to another sanctuary – the forest – for a short walk. Pacific Spirit Regional Park is an 874-hectare (2,160-acre) park in the University Endowment Lands, on Point Grey on the west side of Vancouver. Within five minutes of entering the forest trails, I leave the city behind. There’s a quality to the air in the forest that nurtures serenity, bringing peace to my breath. Today was a bright day and shafts of light filtered through the forest canopy to illuminate patches on the forest floor. I took some photos with my iPhone (see below).

I should say that in more orthodox Jewish circles, activities like driving, carrying a phone and taking photos are violations of Shabbat. But I consider myself a pick-and-choose Jew and go with those practices that serve me.

When I returned home, I focused on another sanctuary – my own being. I did my daily practice of chanting, meditation and yoga, which I consider essential for spiritual maintenance. I love the chorus of a song of modern gospel called “Sanctuary,” written by John W. Thompson and Randy Scruggs:

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true;
With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living
Sanctuary for You.

Then I enjoyed a Shabbat nap. Sleep is a delicious sanctuary.

The forest in the University Endowment Lands is a sanctuary from the city.

This mossy patch reminded me of my favourite place in Kyoto, the moss temple called Saiho-ji.

Ferns are green and luxuriant in our West Coast forests year-round.

Funny how your mind can play tricks. When I first spotted this sign, I thought it said “Emotionally Sensitive Area”.

This morning playing doubles tennis at the University of B.C., I remembered some sage advice from a friend, Samadhi Dari: “Hit the ball consciously.” On the most basic level, to me that means keep my eye on the ball. Seems so simple, but failing to that has doomed me to mediocrity at any sport with a ball.

At the age of 10, I tried out for Little League Baseball in South Burnaby. I don’t know how well I kept my eye on the ball but I do know I’ve always tended to close my eyes when a ball seemed to be getting dangerously close. I didn’t make the team but was welcomed into the Blackhawks in the minor league.

In the minor league, we wore second-hand uniforms and were so strapped for equipment that when I played catcher, we only had one mask and pads for both catchers in a game. So poor we had only one jockstrap between us that we wore on the outside with the rest of the gear and shared between at-bats. There must have been some sniggers in the bleachers but I didn’t notice.

As a teenager, I chose playing sax in the school band over sports. But I did spend many happy hours playing ping pong with my dad in our cramped basement. Dad was a natural athlete who had played for the base basketball team when he served overseas in the RCAF during the Second World War. He played catch with me, set up a basketball hoop and even installed a punching bag in the garage.

That reminds me of a family story. Before my dad’s family immigrated here in 1913, they lived in England. We were the Malinsky family then. One of my great-uncles wanted to be a boxer but my great-grandfather didn’t want him to use the family name. So he became Bobby “Kid” Harris. I remember meeting Harris relatives in Winnipeg who looked a lot like Mallins.

As an adult, I jogged and participated in various running events. It wasn’t until I returned from living in Uganda in 2010 that I gravitated to racquet sports. I began playing racquetball at the Jewish Community Centre, and took tennis lessons at Queen Elizabeth Park. Now  I play mixed doubles tennis during the outdoor season at Dunbar Community Centre, and at UBC during the indoor season. Racquetball continues year-round.

Practising tennis and racquetball, I can focus on the ball but in a game I get anxious and lose concentration. Let’s see if I can break that habit.

Shabbat Shalom.

Big yoga day for me today: yoga in my daily practice and then a class in the morning after racquetball. This is not to say I’m a yogi. My body is very stiff but I’m confident bringing daily yoga into my life will help change that. I believe that yoga is the secret to helping stave off serious aging by developing flexibility in every way – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

I first began doing yoga poses in a 40-day training with the Arica Institute in Vancouver in 1974. I remember being determined to do a headstand. Starting in March, it took until I was camping in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, in September, to get upright and stay there.

Twenty years later in classes with Evelyn Neaman, a wonderful yoga teacher, there were many poses that I couldn’t do well, but I was always prideful of being able to stand on my head seemingly forever. But the old adage is that “Pride goeth before the fall.” Eventually, I lost the strength to properly support the pose and began putting too much pressure on my neck. I stopped.

Yoga feels so good when I’m focused and not lost in thought. My body says, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I love feeling virtuous that I’m taking care of myself. Someday I may become a zaida (grandfather in Yiddish) and I want to be healthy so I can be helpful. I’ve offered that whenever and wherever that baby is born, I’ll be there for the first year. Wouldn’t miss it for the world, although, as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.”

I’ve considered talking yoga teacher training to be able to offer what I call “forgiving limbs yoga,” aimed at people with flexibility challenges like mine, along the lines of the Yoga for Stiff Guys classes that already exist. But to do that well and safely for people I’d be teaching would require studying more about the human body than I care to take on. Besides, there’s more than enough paid and volunteer work in my retired life.

The common house at Vancouver Cohousing has a large studio for yoga and other activities. I have the idea of announcing I’ll be there early in the mornings and inviting others to come and share their practices. Our community includes two tai chi teachers, a yoga teacher and other treasures I’ve yet to discover.

The studio is still under construction, with protection on the flooring.

Since we broke ground for building our Vancouver Cohousing project in July 2013, I’ve been inside my apartment a dozen times or more to follow its progress. Today was the first time I got to see it finished. It was the official walk through with Ravi Jandu, quality control supervisor for Noble Construction Management, our project managers. Another cohousing member, Ian Beaty, who is a contractor himelf, was there helping me look for deficiencies in the work and scoping out a minor reno idea.

Overall I’m very pleased with my place, but at first glance I was shocked. The engineered wood floors were nothing like the sample I had seen. I know that in the context of problems in the world, this is extremely privileged small potatoes. But let me rant a bit. My 510-square-foot place is small and dark; I may put a “Lorne’s Cave” sign on the front door. I knew this when I chose it, but all our one-bedrooms are dark – the common house is bright – and the $320,000 price was as much as I was prepared to spend on a home. I upgraded from laminate floors to hickory because the sample looked uniformly light and I wanted anything that would help relieve the darkness. But the installed flooring is all different shades – see the photos. It chops up the already small space; there’s no visual flow. Whine, whine, whine.

OK, rant done. The kitchen is gorgeous with light-grey Shaker cabinets, quartz countertop, undermount sink, gas range and a dishwasher – goodbye dishpan hands. I’m happy with the bathroom, except the dinky 15-inch-wide mirror. There is hot-water radiant in-floor heating throughout. The bedroom is cosy but doable, and my treadmill desk will be a very tight fit in the in-suite storage room, but at least there’s a place for it.

After Ian and I debriefed over coffee at the bustling Chau Veggie Express at 5052 Victoria Drive, I tried out Kawa Sushi at 5088, the sushi bar closest to cohousing. Business was slow but the service was quick, and you can’t beat the value – $5.95 for 18 pieces (yam, tuna and California rolls) plus miso soup. Not stellar sushi but just fine for a neighbourhood joint.

Victoria Drive between 33rd and 43rd is so diverse, with restaurants featuring the cuisines of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and most recently Turkey. The day may come when there’s a headline “The New Drive” in the Georgia Straight heralding Victoria Drive’s arrival as a newly hip neighbourhood. I may write it myself. Under my own name this time. Back in the late ’60s while I was a reporter for the Vancouver Sun, I wrote and photographed for the Straight about demonstrations and protests under the pseudonym Sheikh Istanli.

Did my daily practice today. They say New Year’s resolutions often don’t last more than a month. I’m hoping that writing these posts will help keep me on the path.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to getting back to friends who have commented and encouraged me – thank you!

The bedroom, the room people like to darken, is ironically the brightest room in my place.

After the holidays, it’s back to my Tuesday and Thursday morning routine – racquetball and yoga class at the Jewish Community Centre. Not athletically talented, I’m grateful to these guys for playing with me. I’m especially grateful to Tevie, in the red shirt, who introduced me to the game when I returned from Uganda in 2010. Fifth day of daily practice when I got out of bed this morning, sent money to two students in Uganda, posted a rental ad on Craigslist for a three-bedroom at Vancouver Cohousing, updated a client’s website and produced her digital newsletter, Skyped to Ottawa, saw “Carol” with Roni this evening, and now writing this. Full day.

Greatest joy of my life

Four years after the move to Vancouver, our daughter was born. I am honouring her request not to have her life details in this blog. But let me say that being her father has been the greatest joy of my life.

Early on as a parent I started a fathers’ group for dads devoted to their kids. We shared our stories and found support for our devotion. Some of the fathers who came were from Or Shalom, the Jewish Renewal community in Vancouver. Until I encountered Or Shalom, I thought “Jewish spirituality” was an oxymoron after the dry, lifeless experience of my youth in synagogues. Or Shalom was creative, musical and egalitarian, but still I danced around the edges for some years.

We bought our first house on West 5th Ave. in Kitsilano  for $110,000 in 1979, then sold it five years later to build a home further west on 5th in Point Grey. With a sweeping view of the mountains and ocean, it had many special touches, such as a Japanese bath and garden.

At the end of 1989, I took a year’s leave of absence from The Province and we went to live in Tokyo – see photo above – where I worked for Knight Ridder Financial News and my wife launched a business. In Japan, I began playing taiko (Japanese drums). I extended the leave twice but when we returned to Vancouver my wife essentially stayed in Japan to run her business. We divorced and I became a single dad.

Back in Vancouver, Or Shalom reached out and supported us so warmly I finally became a member. I also joined a taiko class taught by John Endo Greenaway that grew into a performance group called Tokidoki Taiko. I played until 2001 when I suffered “taiko elbow”. Around the same time, I retired from 25 years of running after complications from a stress fracture.

In 2004, I took a two-year training in sacred chant leadership with Rabbi Shefa Gold from New Mexico. That year I began offering evenings of Hebrew chanting on the last Sunday of the month, which continues today as Chanting & Chocolate where we chant and then serve tea and triple-chocolate brownies that I bake. A powerful vehicle for healing energy, chanting is my most direct path to connection to the Divine.

I wanted to retire from the 9-to-5 before I turned 60. My last day as a 59-year-old was my last day as an editor in the entertainment section at The Province newspaper. I rented the ANZA Club for my Freedom 59 party the next night. Eighty friends and family came. We rolled out rugs for an hour of sacred chanting, then rolled them up again to boogie into the night with a rockabilly band.

The next two years took me all over the world on travel writing assignments to such places as Peru, China, Japan, the Bahamas, Kenya, Mexico and Ukraine.

Most of my life I had the intention to at one point spend a year or so in the developing world giving back for my privileged life in Canada. The recession of 2008 lopped 20 percent off my capital and it was no longer sustainable to take income from my investmentys. In looking for volunteer opportunities where I could live off my pension, I googled “Jewish” and “volunteer” and up popped the Abayudaya community of African Jews in eastern Uganda. I knew them through a CD of their music, which features Jewish prayer with African melodies and rhythms.

I contacted them through a U.S. NGO called Kulanu and headed to Uganda on my own. I lived in the village of Nabugoye Hill, taught in the Abayudaya primary and high schools and found many ways to be of service. After Nabugoye, I worked in the capital, Kampala, as publications manager for the Uganda country office of BRAC, world’s largest anti-poverty organization, and hosted biweekly Shabbatons for Abayudaya university students. Since my return home, donations from our chant nights and my monthly Shabbat dinner in Vancouver help send five Abayudaya orphans to school, and I have other projects that support women and girls.

These days I keep my editorial skills sharp polishing reports for an Ottawa consultancy and an Ontario provincial agency. I also update a client’s website and produce her digital newsletters.

Next month I move into Vancouver Cohousing, a 31-unit project in collaborative living I’ve been involved in since 2012 and is almost finished construction. In fact, tomorrow I get to see my own finished unit for the first time.