Colombia Calling - The English Voice in Colombia

Picking up where we left off in Part 1, Canadian journalist Nadja Drost continues her tale of travel alongside desperate migrants from all over the world in their hopeful quest of reaching the United States. At times, this does not make for easy listening.

We discuss the realities of the crossing through the Darien jungle, the most physically demanding section of their oddessey and Drost provides us with not only vital insights and information but also some of the stories she collects along the way.

NADJA DROST is a Canadian journalist and documentary filmmaker. Currently based in New York, she lived in Bogotá, Colombia, for a decade and continues to report on Latin America for the PBS NewsHour and other outlets.

In what is a three-part series on the Colombia Calling podcast, we'll be exploring the realities - warts and all - of crossing the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama. Canadian journalist Nadja Drost made the crossing in 2019 and her excellent piece came out in the California Sunday Magazine in April 2020. It makes for a terrifying and harrowing read, but is arguably one of the best articles I have read so far this year.

Drost brings us down to earth with stories of migrants from Sri Lanka to Cameroun and the difficulties they face on this physically and mentally demanding passage. Do all of their migrants make it to the US, what happens when they are in Mexico, did the journalists end up sharing their food, what were the dangers?

We address all of these issues and more over the coming three weeks.

NADJA DROST is a Canadian journalist and documentary filmmaker. Currently based in New York, she lived in Bogotá, Colombia, for a decade and continues to report on Latin America for the PBS NewsHour and other outlets.

Tags and Keywords: darien gap, journalist nadja drost, colombia to panama, migrants in darien, migrants reaching US, hike darien gap, adventure colombia, carlos villalon, richard mccoll journalist, colombia calling podcast, podcast english colombia

Both a successful Judge and a Barrister in the UK, Sarah Lucy Cooper's life could have taken an extremely different course were foreigners permitted to practice law in Colombia. However, as we learn in Episode 323 of the Colombia Calling podcast, her 1990 introduction to Colombia defined the course she took in her life back home.

We hear from Cooper regarding her time in Colombia and her frequent visits to the country, her reflections on Colombian law and definitely understand why she has been described as: "a robust and tenacious lawyer equally adept at handling witnesses as arguing the finer points of law."

Tune in for an upbeat yet honest understanding of contemporary Colombia.

We are all suffering due to the Corona virus pandemic which has swept the world and some more than others, and here at the Colombia Calling podcast, we have the opportunity to talk to a small business owner in San Gil, Santander to see how he is faring.

Shaun Clohesy is a long-time australian transplant to Colombia and is responsible for opening up one of the original hostels in this country, the Macondo in San Gil.

Clohesy effectively put Colombia's adventure sports capital on the map for the international travel community. And how the Macondo hostel has grown and how Clohesy has changed from a dreadlocked backpacker to a respectable family man in San Gil! We discuss it all.

Needeless to say, the Corona Virus swept in and decimated the travel and tourism business and Clohesy shares insights about what is happening in both San Gil and Colombia and how he is hoping to survive.

Check out the Macondo Hostel, recommend it to friends and perhaps buy a voucher for a future stay. http://www.macondohostel.com

With upwards of 900,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, "Un Colombiano Mas," and with entries routinely drawing more than a million views, Zach Morris is undisputedly a one man positive public relations campaign for all things to do with Colombia!

Hailing from South Carolina, Morris is a psychology major and speaks to the Colombia Calling podcast about how he fell into becoming an influencer and youtuber and how, over time, this led him to receiving his Colombian citizenship. it's an incredible tale of upbeat experiences and unbridled love for his new homeland.

With uploads in both English and Spanish - and one Maluma style foray into the music industry with his reggaeton song, "Mi Latina, - Zach Morris has found his niche in Colombia and is widely recognized as the gringo who truly loves this country.

Tune in to hear the story of Zach Morris in Colombia, how a guy from South Carolina became a household name in Colombia.

Check out his youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/williamzachmorris

In fifteen years covering Colombia, this is the best book I’ve ever read about the cocaine trade. If you want to understand why the drugs are produced here, then how they get to the U.S., there’s no better guide." (Matthew Bristow, former Colombia bureau chief, Bloomberg News)

Toby Muse, author of "Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels―from the Jungles to the Streets" has been receiving high praise from all quarters for his recently released book. And rightly so, this is the culmination of Muse's decades of knowledge of Colombia and the cocaine trade.

Reading more like a work of non-fiction, Muse invites us into the otherworldly experience of meeting the actors in the chain from coca leaf picker to narco sub driver and the result makes for an incredible read but at the same time the author never permits you to forget the violence, aggression and desperation involved in the drugs trade.

So, it's an incredible honour to have Muse back on the Colombia Calling podcast and sharing his anecdotes with us. Buy the book and tune in to the podcast.

How is your relationship faring under the Covid19/ Corona Virus lockdown, how are you keeping sane, have you stuck to a routine, are you all alone and now talking to your pet(s)? It's a time of tragedy for sure, but in order to share a different perspective of life in a quarantine in Bogotá, Peter Dale, a founding member of the Bogotá Writers, shares with us some extracts from his "Covidiary," now entitled: "The Quarantine Chroncles."

We hear and discuss four different entries from Dale's diary. We begin with Day 1 and the innocence towards the pandemic which we may still have possessed her in Colombia and finish on Day 10 and things get darker in Dale's prose as this innocence is now certainly behind us.

Peter Dale's diary has been picked up by Miguel Vila, a Colombia TV producer and can now, a version of the diary can be enjoyed on Instagram TV. Check the link on the Colombia Calling facebook and twitter pages.

Before the Corona virus reached Colombia, President Duque and his political patron, former president Alvaro Uribe, were in danger of drowning in the scandal engulfing them.

To keep it brief, and Adriaan Alsema of Colombia Reports will explain this further in the podcast, there is the very real possibility that Duque won the presidential contest in 2018 with a campaign of vote-buying in various parts of the Colombia.

Wiretaps have revealed that the late Jose Guillermo Hernandez (Nene Hernandez), the alleged money launderer of drug trafficker Marquitos Figueroa, was the go-between for narco-trafficking bosses and the political elite. Both Duque and Uribe have denied the links but the photographic evidence tells no tales and neither do the contents of the telephone wire-taps.

So, in the first part of the show we discuss "Nenegate," and then move on to the very troubling onset of Covid 19 in Colombia. Alsema gives us a run-down of what the government has done so far, an idea of whether it may effective and what we should expect as we launch into a 24 day-long quarantine.

Elizabeth Dickinson has been Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Colombia since 2019. Her work centers around armed conflict dynamics in the country and the implementation of the 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas. Previously a journalist, Elizabeth first reported from Colombia in 2011, covering topics including criminal and armed group violence, illegal mining, migration, and national politics.

With this resume, I can think of no better person to have on the Colombia Calling podcast to explain one of the most complex regions of the country. Tune in to hear an in-depth, digestible and informed overview of Colombia, the sociopolitical problems and so much more.

Follow her @dickinsonbeth

"You write the books that you want to read," Matt Rendell tells me in our conversation on Episode 315 of the Colombia Calling podcast. Well, I wish I could have written his latest book entitled: "Colombia es Pasión! The Generation of Racing cyclists who Changed their Nation and the Tour de France," out in all good bookstores in the UK in March...as I most certainly want to read it.

In a fascinating interview, Rendell gives as an insight into the beginnings of his love affair with Colombia (from a basement at Channel 4) and the reasons behind the current surge in cycling heroes emerging from the highlands of Cundinamarca and Boyaca. We discuss economics and how this has affected cycling in Colombia and the spirituality surrounding the likes of Nairo Quintana, Egan Bernal and other household names in Colombia and on the international cycling circuit.

What results is a sneak peak into his 300 pages plus book which sounds like a book that everyone with any interest in Colombia should read. Humbly, Rendell declares that this, "book is written for Colombia."

Be sure to tune in and also, buy the book!