Nubia Rocío Gaona Cardenas and two of her children live in the Colombian countryside, in the municipality of Chipaqué in the department of Cundinamarca. This is the same department where Bogotá, the country’s capital, is located. Twenty-seven kilometers from that city, farmers grow potato, onion, aromatic herb and vegetable crops that supply the metropolitan area.
Gaona Cárdenas is the only adult in charge of her family. She was widowed two years ago. Her daughter Heidi Gaona, the oldest of her children, lives independently.
We know this story because Nuria Gaona has told it on camera. She has posted these videos on the Internet.
On April 29, Gaona Cárdena and her two children made their debut as youtubers. Now that online messages govern communications during the pandemic, they were looking at a way to improve their economic situation and that of peasant families like theirs, which has worsened with the quarantine. The family opened the “Nubia e hijos” channel on YouTube. The sons are Arley David Gaona Gaona and Jeimer Alejandro Riveros Gaona. To date the channel has 313,000 subscribers.
They want to use this channel to teach how to grow fruit, vegetables, and aromatic plants at home. They also sell their own kits of soil and seeds and bags for planting, at five dollars, and a larger kit, which costs seven dollars, that includes three tiny plant pots. They can be ordered through a whatsapp through the Huertos de la Sabana website.
The originator to this channel is precisely this small business, Huertos de la Sabana. “My neighbor has the lot next to my house. The lot belonged to his grandfather, who was a peasant just like his father. Three years ago my late husband approached my neighbor. We made a partnership where my neighbor put up the money and we put up the work. And at the end of the crop we split the finances in half. But when we took the crop out, it was so cheap that it wasn’t enough,” he says.
“It cost more to pull out the land than to pay for the potato,” says Arley Riveros Gaona.
“My neighbor lost the investment budget, and we lost six months’ work,” Nuria continues. “It had already happened to us peasants several times. For us it was not new to be affected in the price by the intermediaries.”
“But then this seemed very strange to our neighbor, because he was buying very expensive potatos in Bogotá [he now lives in the city],” Jeimer Gaona says. “He started to investigate and found that there were many intermediaries in the potato and in all the products of the land.”
Nubia Gaona says that his neighbor set up an undertaking with his wife in his niece to sell the products “at a stable price all year round, so that the farmers wouldn’t risk losing their crops.” But the buying companies left when the price of potatoes became cheaper elsewhere.
In addition, sales fell due to the quarantine.
Nubia and his sons took advantage of the situation to be creative. With the help of someone she calls “Miss Julia”, they set up the Youtube channel. “My son was telling me long ago that he wanted to be a youtuber,” she says.
The first video opens with the clucking of a chicken and a panning of the green landscape. Then Gaona Cárdenas and the two children make an introduction: “Today we are going to tell you how a peasant family decided to become a Youtuber. I am Jeimer Alejandro Riveros Gaona,” enters the youngest. “And I am Arley David Gaona Gaona”, follows his brother, with a thicker voice. “And she is our mother”, chants the two pointing to Nubia Gaona. “And she’s our pet,” the three of them say at the same time, referring to the dog that Arley David is holding.
Nubia Gaona calls herself “a peasant woman and mother of the head of the family”, with a big smile. She talks about her widowhood.
“My family, like other families, has been affected by the drop in prices of products, since there is no justification for taking them off the land.”
“Let’s make this viral video and no one has to go to bed without eating, knowing that we can grow our own food at home,” Arley David points out.
“And we’re also going to have fun at home learning these beautiful Colombian farm chores”, Jeimer adds.
In eleven days, the family has posted four videos. They also have an Instagram account, with nearly 150,000 followers.
In the third video, from May 5, 2020, Jeimer Alejandro teaches how to sow with the kit they sell. He makes a shovel with a plastic bottle, takes out the soil, puts it in the bag, and throws in three seeds. “And here is our chamomile plant. Every week we pour water and lots of love into it.” Then he sows mint in the small pot.
In the last one, on May 8, the two children and their older sister, Heidi, talk about the difficulties in the countryside to receive virtual classes from their schools.
“Virtual classes are difficult because there are some children who don’t have a computer or tools to do it,” Jeimer says with strands of straw in his hands. “It takes a long time to get into the homework. We need everyone’s help to educate the peasant children, all of them.”
Nubia explains that the type of the homework when downloading it on the cell hones is very small; the children’s eyes hurt and they get headaches.
The video closes with “happy news.” The Nubia family and children managed to raise enough money, “thanks to the support” of the audience, to buy a laptop.