Life from Canada to Latin America, one word at a time.
It turns out my dad is allergic to Bogota. What was supposed to be a relaxing Christmas vacation, therefore, filled with hiking, coffee and urban exploration morphed into Anna’s Grand Clinic Tour of Colombia, Christmas 2015, complete with ambulance rides and blood pressure machines. Thankfully, after various tests to determine if anything was wrong with
like jumping off a cliff the lip of the mountain into the roiling volcano below & find there among the lit up bleached bones & smoke & ash a narrow opening through solid stone into another world expanding rapidly into rooms & more rooms filled with laughter & feasting & song the transformed heart of
Last night, the Women Weavers of Dreams and Flavours of Peace of Mampuján won the National Peace Prize. These are my reflections after the event on the various definitions a peace prize can hold. A peace prize is a piece of paper with handwritten words on it. It can be held to to the light
At one point during a discussion on development paradigms at the last MCC retreat, Terry directed us to divide into two groups, depending on our first instinct when entering a new group of people or situation. In one group were all the people who immediately look for the power structures. Who has control and who
My apartment has been filled with blessed silence the last few days. On Monday night, I lit candles, slowly ate dark chocolate, drank a glass of white wine and read a book, all while listening to piano music. I felt more relaxed than I had in weeks. Ely is gone. For three week, Kristina and
We spent a day a couple of weeks ago hiking through farmland and fields in the San Rafael National Park, nestled in the foothills of the Andes. It was a sheer delight, not least all of all because the lunch ladies, instead of sandwiches, packed us styrofoam takeout containers overflowing with overcooked spaghetti and meat
I was in a grocery store in a small Colombian city the other day, hoping against hoping to find the elusive holy grail of imports: cheddar cheese. While I did not find any cheese, what I did come across was even more unlikely. There, in the middle of the bakery section, were stacks of boxed
For not being at all Catholic, Saint Francis of Assisi keeps appearing in my life in strange ways. The first time was during my freshman year at university, when I went to a meeting of the International Social Justice Club. The leaders passed around green cards printed with the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi.
When I used to sit on street corners in Mampujan and drink apple flavoured pink pop with my neighbours, the conversation sometimes turned to the months and years directly after the community’s displacement in 2000. People would tell me about multiple families living together in one classroom of the Maria la Baja school, poorer than
The Parkway was glorious this morning. The sun was shining and there were people everywhere. I saw a man carrying a giant bouquet of helium balloon figures, a baby with an enormous hair ribbon eating an oblea, an elderly man pushing an even older man in a wheelchair, a tiny political rally directly across from
Anna L. Vogt 