Eating the Donkey

Everything I knew about Colombia was bad. Bombs, drugs, terror, pain. Except. There was the music that seeped under doorways with laughter close behind. There was the smile that lit the room from a little girl hiding behind her mother. There was the magical realism that made a hat fly into the air and turn the gritty streets into a jewelbox from above. There was something to Colombia that I knew I needed to see.

On arrival in Bogota, the first bit of magic was that a stranger was standing at the airport waving a sign with our names on it. We hadn't booked a ride, so we were skeptical. Would you accept a ride from a stranger in a place you knew only for its bad news? She had a good story, though. She was our Airbnb host, and she knew it would be hard for us to find a reliable taxi, so she came with her truck and her dog to give us a ride.

We met a family full of joy despite years of fighting cancer who taught us to dance, then led us to a stranger in Medellin. I couldn't tell my mother we trusted a strange man to drive her granddaughters out of town to see the city from above and drink chocolate with cheese. But it was magic.

I want to keep telling the stories of why Colombia is not just magical but beautiful and wonderful. And I want to continue to tell the stories of other places that have a bad reputation - El Salvador, Iran, Bangladesh. I need training to tell a great visual story. And winning this would be magic.