In 1998, overwhelmed by the public order situation in Maria La Baja (Bolivar), which included a co-worker’s father murder, Maira Genes Marquez, an Afro woman, moved to Cartagena.
She arrived at the Heroic City to work daily in whatever she could find. Initially, she got housing and a job at the Rafael Nuñez School located in Los Escribas neighborhood. She worked in the library, but they didn’t pay her a salary. She spent two years there. “It was an arrangement we made with the school’s owner: I worked in the library, and she didn’t pay, but she gave me food and a bed. It was one thing for the other.”
She worked handing out books and bibliographic records to the students. And in her free time, she devoted herself to reading. “I remember reading Rafael Pombo’s poetry and his children’s fables such as ‘El renacuajo paseador’, ‘Simon el bobito’ and ‘La pobre viejecita’.”
After her daughter’s birth, Luisa Fernanda, in 2001, she got a job as a cashier at a supermarket, but she was fired for breastfeeding the baby. Without income, she sent her daughter to her mother so she would take care of her for a while in Maria La Baja.
Unemployed and hopeless, she found out about some free courses in a shoe repair shop called Las Botas near the India Catalina monument, where they taught how to make sandals and she only had to bring the materials.
Quickly, she learned to make sandals, which she initially sold to friends, neighbors, and acquaintances in Cartagena. It seemed things were getting better, and by then, after five years of being away from her daughter, she returned to her when she lived in a rented apartment in San Fernando neighborhood.
She participated in an open call for “Mujeres Ahorradoras”, a Social Prosperity initiative to teach how to manage income. And she also signed up for a Chamber of Commerce program on how to set up a business, manage it and make it grow.
In 2013, Maira legally formalized her business “Luisfer Calzado”, and signed up for another Chamber of Commerce project, this time dealing with strengthening a business. At the end, they gave her supplies to make shoes, a showcase cabinet, and a sewing machine. She set up the workshop in the apartment where she lived with her daughter. From that point forward, they dispatched orders, which were mainly done through social media.
However, her health played a trick on her. Maira suffered a stroke that left her speechless and completely immobilized on her right side.
An entrepreneurial girl
With barely 12 years old, her daughter Luisa Fernanda decided to take over the business. “My mother told me she wanted to sell the business, but I said no, that it was our livelihood, and I would star managing it,” explains the young woman.
She learned to make the sandals they sold in Cartagena and Maria La Baja on the run; they couldn’t drop production. At that time, she was in the seventh grade at school, where she found new clients: her fellow students, her teachers, their families.
Luisa Fernanda remembers she started making some shoes for herself before Christmas 2013. That December, she sold close to 400,000 COP worth of sandals and, even though she couldn’t wear brand new shoes, she had the satisfaction of doing the job and carrying on with the business.
After twelve months in bed and speechless, a symptom due to lack of oxygen in her brain caused by the thrombosis, Maira regained her health. “It was a slow recovery, but I finally made it, although I still have some small consequences. It’s like being reborn,” she says.
Despite the difficulties, she is proud of what her daughter did during her illness. “She is a tough one, because she was only 12 and she took care of everything by herself while I was bedridden. That makes me proud.” Talking about this, she reflects on the issue of child labor, but at the same time, she thinks that if Luisa Fernanda hadn’t taken over the business, they would have had to sell it and lose their income source.
Regarding her illness, Maira thanks the Unit for the Victims for the support and psychosocial care she received.
Having overcome her health problems, Maira wanted to resume the business, but given that Luisa Fernanda was doing well in the sandals production and marketing, they decided the business’ results would be for both.
The magic showcase in Medellin
Thanks to other training sessions and open calls for business strengthening, they acquired three more sewing machines. Thus, the business began to prosper. They sell footwear for men, women, and children, including people with disabilities. “If a person has one leg shorter than the other, we make a sandal that is taller than the other,” explains Maira.
They have also exhibited their products at various events. Last year, they were in six fairs in Cartagena and, thanks to the Unit for the Victims, had a stand at the Medellin Flower Fair. “It was a very interesting experience because we got to get our business known, and we had good sales during the four days the event lasted. In addition, we made contacts, and today they reach out to us asking for big purchase orders,” says Maira proudly.
As she explains, after the pandemic, sales were made mainly through social media and they dropped a little, but they were reactivated when the quarantines ended.
With the compensation she received from the Unit because of her forced displacement, Maira invested in Luisa Fernanda’s education and improved the house they had bought in a neighborhood of Cartagena’s Commune 2, where the workshop operates today.
“That resource was a great help, because we were able to fix the house, which was still in its early stages; besides, the workshop is there. In addition, my daughter was about to enter the university, and it also helped for her study.” Currently, Luisa Fernanda, 20, is in Business Administration at Cartagena’s University fifth semester.
Today, “Luisfer Calzado” employs three people: two households head mothers, who work in the workshop, and a person who delivers the orders. The business has been well received: clients from Cartagena and Maria La Baja are joined by buyers in Barranquilla, Turbaco and those they met at the Flower Fair in Medellin.
With some vanity, Maira reveals the materials and the process to make a pair of sandals: leather, insole, leather lining, three glues, and the sole.
“First, you take the insole, then you work on the upper part of the footwear, then you sew it on the machine and then, in the worktable, the sole is cleaned, the insole is lined and whole sandal is assembled,” she says.
As their next goal, mother and daughter want to develop of sports shoes. They dream about opening several establishments on the Caribbean Coast, thus creating employment for single mothers, and reaching international markets.
The armed conflict and health issues intervened in Maira and Luisa Fernanda’s lives, but their strength and drive have no limits. In the face of adversity, they push forward.
Social media: @luisfercalzado_ctg (Instagram) y luisfercalzado (Facebook)
(End/CMC/COG/RAM)
