Labeling our uniforms, books, containers, and bags at the start of the school year.
Present at every school event.
Changing his career path three times because he wanted more time with his family.
Teaching us how to change car wheels, check oil and coolant, and align the wiper water sprays from when we were as little as 7 years old.
Going through our all homework and exercise books weekly to guide us. When I brought him my medical school notes to review he said, "Your work is very neat but I can no longer help you with the concepts."
Making a big deal of all our first days. Came to all first days of term from kindergarten, took us to our high school boarding school dormitories, our University rooms, our first homes after school, and to the airport when we had to travel abroad.
Left high-level meetings to pick us up from school and would return to them later while we hung around his office getting to know his colleagues and drinking cold sodas.
Every end of term took us for the special end-of-term family ice cream treat. Even on those occasions when our term reports weren't pleasing.
Read to us all the time. By the time we were 9 we had listened to him read Things fall apart, the river between, song of Lawino, weep not child, Tom Sawyer.
Watched the TV series The African with us explaining this and that.
Told us the good about our country and took us to see the country. We went after Sunday Mass with tea in flasks and egg and corned beef sandwiches.
Told us Acholi folk tales and made us so proud of who we are: Africans, Ugandans, Luo, Acholi.
Taught us how to unplug drains. Don't worry about getting your hands dirty; hands can always be washed.
Taught us how to assemble electrical plugs, fix bulbs, replace fuses, and break the circuit in the main switch.
Watched the constellations with us.
He never complained about his tough childhood. Orphaned early and brought up by a single mother who made local brew (right under the noses of the colonialists who had made it illegal) to take them through school. He told us only the humor he saw in their poverty-stricken lives.
When we became adults he said "Spend your money to make your life and your family comfortable. That is the reason we work."
Being an accountant he taught us to value money. He said, "Don't spend what you don't have. Don't imagine what you would do with money that isn't yours. Work for whatever you want. Decide what is enough early on or you will never know when you have enough."
He only brought home work on one or two nights a year and it was always at the end of their financial year.
When we finally got a VCR he would take us to the video lib and as a rule, the family would borrow three movies: two for the kids, one for grown-ups. The latter he would watch with his leading lady.
Amazing with his grandchildren.
Amazing husband to an amazing wife.
Staunch Catholic convert. He always read the Bible to us and taught us (still teaches us) Bible history and Catholic Catechism.
He gives, gives, and gives especially when it has to do with education and career development.
Whenever we meet his past colleagues and people working with him today they tell us what we already know. "Your Dad is an amazing person. Your Dad is the reason I am who I am today."
His one weakness (and we used to use it to get a laugh) is When he hears the words "Where are the keys?" He totally freaks out.
He has taught us how to live: Laugh, love, give, and find humor in the oddest even most painful places.
Dad turned 73 this year. He is an amazing father. Thank you, Lord for gifting us with him.
