During a raid two months ago in India, rescuers invaded a room crowded with 36 women enslaved in the sex industry. Within moments of entering, they heard strange noises just on the other side of a wall. They searched for an opening, but there were no windows or doors. Finally they tore down a section…Read more Freedom Sunday
poverty
A Tameable Beast in Haiti
I am the two-faced lover of the developing world, the smiling maiden offering a delicacy secretly laced with poison. With one breath, I nurture and I kill. I demand whole-hearted devotion. They come to me in droves as I freely flow, offering daily obeisance in the washing of clothes and communal bathing. From first waking…Read more A Tameable Beast in Haiti
The Woman at the Well in Haiti
I fall in step behind an old woman who pads along the rocky path in bare feet, carrying empty plastic jugs. We trek single-file along a ridge, with ochre corn fields sprawling beneath layers of purple hills and mountains, crowned by cerulean sky. To our left, various structures perch along the ridge - roughly hewn, boarded boxes…Read more The Woman at the Well in Haiti
Painting A Prayer for Haiti (& a poem)
How my heart cringes on this mountain carcass – mounded bones stripped bare. Flayed flanks decay into ceaseless city striving. Betrayed and battered, you sprawl exposed, miserable, dull with hunger. But I sense something here, yearning at the fringes. Something broods at the frayed edges of this wasteland. Something determined, stubborn, more powerful and pervasive…Read more Painting A Prayer for Haiti (& a poem)
A Beautiful Girl in Haiti
Deep in the trenches of poverty and strife, a beautiful girl wearing a white head-band picks her way through garbage and crumbling cement and passes through the gates of Good Shepherd School. In Cite Soleil, the poorest slum of the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, she aspires to something more than she inherited at…Read more A Beautiful Girl in Haiti
Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance
Port au Prince is the hustling, bustling, overflowing city-that-never-stops capital of Haiti. It is said that the streets are the living room of Port au Prince. From the brightly colored, stacked structures on the hillsides of the upscale Petionville suburb to the densely-packed, narrow crumbling streets of the City Soleil slum, it is an endless…Read more Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance
A Rooftop Crack in Haiti
On Monday, dawn crept over me on a rooftop in Haiti. Just below, massive trucks lumbered over narrow rocky streets, lugging water to and from a water purification facility. Roosters crowed and dogs barked. People walked, sang, laughed, and chattered in every nook and cranny in the streets, balconies and rooftops all around. Palm fronds…Read more A Rooftop Crack in Haiti
Let It Be Me – Response to Terrorism in Kenya
Horror still clutches my heart like an apparition from beyond the grave. “It is over,” Kenyan President Kenyatta assured the world on Tuesday. Some of the perpetrators are dead. Hopefully the rest are amongst eleven people detained in a sweep of Kenya’s exit points. And yet the echoes of their evil acts reverberate long after they…Read more Let It Be Me – Response to Terrorism in Kenya
Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters
Kenya, 2001 (somewhere near Nairobi's second largest slum) Blinking in the transition from blazing equatorial sunlight to sacred shadows, we hesitate in the foyer. The sanctuary stretches before us, an ordination service for new Sisters already in progress. Rows of simple benches packed to capacity march along concrete floors. I spot an open space in…Read more Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters
A Secret Garden That Changed My Life (In Vietnam)
We explore a silky summer evening, airbrushed with cool mountain air and golden sinking light. Newly arrived in Steamboat Springs, we wander west. The river is gift enough, flowing like laughter between us. One of those rare series of moments when you feel so alive, so present to where you are, so thankful to love…Read more A Secret Garden That Changed My Life (In Vietnam)
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 