Bromeliads

The flowers are a gift for her mother. While climbing a tree to pick fruit, 10-year-old Gloria discovered ornamental bromeliads nestled in the branches and plucked them for her mother’s garden.

She wears a necklace made by the Balsita youth group. They make beads out of reeds that grow on the farm, and combine them with glass beads in the community’s colors: Red in memory of the family members killed in the displacement; yellow symbolizing their hope for the future; and green representing the promise of the land that is their life and work.

“It hurts us to remember,” they tell us, “ but it hurts us more to forget.”