Edimar,26, is from Barquisimeto, Venezuela. She came to Colombia in November 2018, when she was pregnant with her youngest son, David, leaving her 9-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son behind. She says she left because she had nothing in Venezuela and kids to support, but there was no work. At first she lived in the bordertown of Cucuta, sleeping on the ground in the streets through her pregnancy. She started selling coffee on the streets, sending what little money she can make back to support her family.

She is still making a living selling coffee in the street, but no longer living in the streets, now she rents a very small room here that she shares with five other people. She’s trying to get on a waiting list to live in a refugee camp, so that she can send every penny she makes back to her family, but all the camps are full with a long waiting list.

Living here without her other children is extremely painful, she says she’s trying to do the best
she can to earn money and find options for bringing her other kids here. They are with her
mother back home in Venezuela, where the lack of water and electricity is getting worse every
day, she says.

We met her at the Malteser clinic on the border point Paraguachon, where she brought her son
David for a medical consultation because he was sick, and received medicine. She says that
being able to visit the Malteser clinic makes her really happy, because it’s very difficult for
Venezuelans to get medical help.

“It is really difficult, there is no medicine in Venezuela, even if
you see a doctor there’s no medicine,” she says, adding that even in Colombia she doesn’t have
papers or money to take her son to the doctor.

When asked about the future, she shrugs and says that she has no expectations, no hope for
the future, only that one day the situation in Venezuela will improve.