Certain things trigger childhood memories: playing in the streets, for instance, or playing with marbles and colorful yo-yos. This can also happen around tabletop games: we reminisce about family tournaments and the laughter or the anger over winning or losing. In other words, these games help us remember the company and warmth of simpler times. Perhaps this is what Luis Octavio Ocampo enjoys most about the impact he has had thanks to the path he chose.

For more than 20 years, he has been crafting wooden toys and games in Santa Rosa de Cabal in what became his family business. Marta Lucía, his wife, is the one in charge of sales; his daughter, Jamileth, is the business’s manager; Dairo Germán is the architect and designer of the project; and Kevin is responsible for quality control and product packaging. Mundo Jadake, their enterprise, is named after the initials of the family’s children. They describe themselves as follows: “more than game manufacturers, we are makers of smiles.”

Everything began for Luis Octavio when he noticed that his logging town had an abundance of wood. He has always worked in this field. He graduated high school with a technical degree in woodworking, which he would later build upon in a program from the National Learning Service (SENA, as it is called in Spanish). He mainly focused on crafting furniture, dining room sets, and wood veneers that could be used all around the house.

He soon realized, however, that these processes wasted a lot of wood. So, one day he took some scraps of pinewood and decided to fashion replicas of the collection cars he remembered so well from his childhood: The Ford Model T or the classic Mercedes Benz he saw in the movies. He discovered a new talent, which others noted as well when he participated in a craft fair in Pereira. He was told that this new interest of his was unique and original.

He had already mastered the wood lathe, so he suddenly found himself cutting and sanding tiny pieces: lamp posts, windshields, and small tires. It was incredibly fun. Not long after, he began mixing different types of wood. Cedar, carob, sappan, Chinese ash, and cypress, and Canadian pine had such distinct hues that he did not need to artificially color the wood in any way.

Over the years and with the whole family’s involvement, they started crafting children’s toys and board games aside from the original toy cars. These included the traditional parchís and Rummy-Q, as well as other eastern “brain gymnastics” games such as tangrams, which are made of geometric wooden pieces and ask the player to solve a puzzle with his concentration. This family’s work completely challenges our technological world, which can overwhelm us and often leaves us isolated: they entice us to have a good time sharing with each other.