Waymaker Wednesday: Luz & Andrea

Luz Dary and Andrea form part of a savings group in the south of Bogotá. They live in the area of Cazuca and it is mostly formed by internally displaced people that flock to the cities looking for safety because the countryside is very violent in Colombia right now.

In the case of Luz, she used to be married to a man that was affiliated with the guerillas. He was assassinated, and she flocked to Bogota with her six children.

Luz and Andrea are recyclers. Every night they leave their homes, they leave their children in the care of a neighbor or a friend, and they go rummage through garbage around the city, and they look for plastic, glass, metal, and anything of value that they can find in the garbage. After 5 hours of rummaging the city, they go and sell it. Usually, they get between 3,500 to 5,000 pesos, so that’s around $1.00, 1.50 a day.

Luz was sharing with me, her dreams. She dreams of completing her elementary school education, completing her high school education, and becoming a nurse. She’s studying in a local center to finish her first few elementary grades. And she does this so her children see that their mother is somebody that moves forward, that has a will to live.

This video is a selection from Opportunity International's Virtual Art Gallery: Portrait of a Waymaker. Explore the entire gallery here.