The earthquake spared neither businesses nor homes. But a small food establishment in Pereira, Colombia, remained standing amid the rubble, and that was enough for its employees to decide not to close.
They took the pots out into the street. There, surrounded by collapsed buildings, they began cooking for the victims who have nowhere to return to. One of the workers, a Venezuelan woman whose family fortunately was not harmed, serves food to strangers who from one day to the next were left with nothing.
It should be the authorities who arrive first to assist people. But while state aid takes time to get organized, it is a food establishment and its employees—people who also lost, who are also afraid, who also could have left—who are sustaining an entire community with the little they still have standing. “We are family now. We are all here to help each other”, the woman summed up.