Dayanna

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On a ranch built of mud and hay in the desert of northern Colombia, Dayana, an eight-year-old Wayuu girl, feels for a soccer ball with her feet. Her oldest sister guides her closer. Her father calls out instructions in Wayunaiki on how to kick. Dayana swings, connects, and scores. Her five siblings erupt in cheers as she grins.

Dayana is blind, Wayuu, and fiercely curious. In many rancherías, where dryness bleaches the cactus and wind scours the courtyards, disability is often whispered about or hidden. Her mother chose a different path. Every morning, she walked Dayanna to school, insisting that her daughter’s right to learn was not negotiable. With support from the local secretary of education, the school secured a braille assistant who now sits beside her. Adapting lessons, labeling classroom objects in Braille, and turning the teacher’s voice into tactile, readable knowledge.

In Dayana’s classroom, the lesson of the day is animals. Her classmates study the colorful pictures the teacher hangs on the whiteboard. Birds mid-flight, a lizard basking on a rock, a rabbit frozen mid-hop. Dayana turns instead toward her braille assistant, Daniel. “Can you make me a rabbit?” she asks. Daniel smiles, reaches for a piece of modeling clay, and begins shaping long ears and a rounded back. Dayana’s fingers explore the tiny sculpture, tracing the curves and bumps until the animal takes form in her mind.

Daniel understands better than anyone what it means to translate the world into touch. He was in his fifth semester of engineering when he suffered a retinal detachment that left him blind. The sudden loss pushed him into years of depression—his plans interrupted, his sense of self shaken. It wasn’t until he found Fundación Arcángel that he began to recover. They encouraged him to return to movement, to practice sports, and eventually to join INCI, Colombia’s National Institute for the Blind. There, he learned braille, rebuilt his confidence, and discovered a calling he hadn’t imagined: becoming a braille instructor. Now, beside Dayana, that vocation becomes visible—tactile, even—in every small molded animal, every labeled object, every lesson adapted so she can participate fully.

In this cultural landscape, Dayana’s presence in the classroom and Daniel’s quiet dedication becomes even more significant. Inclusion is not just an educational policy; it is a reweaving of relationships, a subtle shift toward a future where every child, sighted or blind, visible or once hidden, can learn to read the world in their own language.