Throughout the Americas, Christmas is celebrated with lights. In Bogota, we light candles in the street and decorate the parks with florescent strings in semi-unrecognizable shapes. In northern Mexico, elaborate life size nativities and candy canes shine in the night. In Canada, we hang our trees with lights and drape garlands over our windows, shining
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Today, all of my wisdom teeth are coming out. Therefore, I would like to share with you all a few wise thoughts, from my collective life experiences, before they are gone with my teeth. Surprisingly, (or not, considering I am getting my teeth out) the majority have to do with food. 1. You always come
In the rhetoric of Colombia, the myth of being Latin America´s largest democracy looms large. But on Monday, democracy was once again seen to be more rhetoric, less reality. Bogota´s leftist mayor, Gustavo Petro, was dismissed from office by the Inspector General for problems when he tried to nationalize the city’s garbage collection last December.
Español Ever since I decided to stay in Colombia for three more years, my life here has felt different and has taken on a permeance that I was not expecting, even as my visa remains in question. I made the choice to live here with eyes wide open to the reality of this place, in
The best summer job of my life involved sugar, coffee and the CBC. I worked making fudge from giant boxed mixes containing corn syrup solids and powdered cream. When I got bored of the kitchen and its accompanying sugar rush, I would walk down the street to a small coffee shop and brew espresso and
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickenson. I would like to take that one step further: hope is the thing with feathers and that thing is a chicken. Chickens are omnipresent on the Caribbean coast. People who don’t have a lot of anything at least have a chicken or two; to have chickens
I was invited to share with Langley Mennonite Fellowship for Peace Sunday. Here are some of my thoughts. Forgiveness and kindness are political acts of peace, which I have had the privilege to witness in Colombia over the past two years. For many, especially in Colombia, the Montes de Maria region of the Caribbean coast
November 11 is coming and so is that moment when we all stop in silence at eleven o’clock to remember. I sang in the choir at Remembrance Day ceremonies in school and veterans came and talked to us. We discussed Great War battle strategy in History Class. In the media, we honour our dead like
Español Prison missives, authored by Saint Paul to Martin Luther King Jr, have power. When the normal liberties of life have been stripped away, all that remains is the humble authority of conviction and the truth of an unbreakable spirit. From his maximum security prison, where he spent the first month sleeping on the cement
When I was growing up, my mom started selling vegetables in my hometown. Each year, the garden and thus the corresponding chores grew a little bigger. I speak for all of my siblings when I say that we hated it. After too many complaints, the s-word was banned from our vocabulary but that did not
Anna L. Vogt 