HE
After forty days in the jungle, the four children were miraculously found alive, 5 km from the site of their plane crash. On May 1, Lesly (13 years old), Soleiny (9 years old), Tien Noriel (5 years old) and Cristin (1 year old) boarded a Cessna 206 aircraft, accompanied by their mother and an indigenous representative relative.
The aircraft takes off from a jungle area known as Araracuara to travel to San José del Guaviare, one of the main cities in the Colombian Amazon. A 350 km flight over the jungle. But shortly after takeoff, the pilot reported an engine problem. And right after, the plane disappears from radar.
Their mother tells them to leave before they die.
All four children and their mother survive the accident. For the first few days, the children stayed near the wreckage and ate the cassava flour they found on board the plane. Seriously injured, her mother lasted only four days, according to the story of the children’s father.
“Before he died, he told them: ‘Go ahead, go'” to join his father, he recounts.
Lesly, the eldest of the siblings, supports her brother and sisters. She looks through the rubble for the bag where the diapers are, she says after a friend of her grandmother’s rescued her.
In a suitcase, Lesly puts a tarp, a towel, some clothes, camping equipment, a flashlight with batteries, a bottle of soda, but also a music box and two mobile phones. The latter are not used to calling them, in the absence of a network, but to “distract themselves” at night, one of the rescuers will detail.
Roots, seeds and plants.
The children know the jungle, which undoubtedly saved them. They are part of the Uitoto indigenous community. She was “evangelized,” “but they kept their animistic beliefs and their deities,” says her grandmother’s friend, Adriana Carrera. “Plants like coca and tobacco are as sacred in his eyes as the Eucharist.”
For the National Organization of Amerindian Peoples of Colombia (Opiac), “the survival of children is the demonstration of the knowledge and relationship that indigenous people have with nature, a link taught from the womb.” A knowledge that has allowed them to feed on roots, seeds and plants.
“Since we were little we transmitted this knowledge and this love for nature to them”, confirms Adriana Carrera. According to her, her mother “taught them everything,” she confesses to Parisian.
“Among the Uitoto, we sing children’s songs about the forest into the ears of the children,” he explains. “They say that such and such a plant is edible, that you should not eat a fruit that is not ripe.”
The three girls and the boy also eat palm fruits and wild mangoes. Throughout their wanderings, they always stay near a stream, filling their little bottle there.
But for the youngest of the brothers, who was only 11 months old and needed breast milk or formula, the mystery remains. “It is likely that they used an equivalent that comes from lianas,” says William Wadoux, a development project consultant and co-organizer of survival courses in the Amazon, for BFMTV. “Certainly certain plants could have allowed the child to survive.”
Footprints and a series of tracks
The children know that the emergency services are trying to find them. They listen to the helicopters that fly over and the messages emitted by the loudspeaker, in particular from their grandmother who tells them, in the Uitoto language, that they are looking for them, asking them to stay where they are so that help can locate them and not be afraid. Wilson the dog, one of the rescue dogs that came looking for them.
By helicopter, 10,000 flyers are released, in Spanish and in the indigenous language, indicating how to contact the emergency services, as well asone hundred survival kits, containing water and food – It is not yet known if children have been able to benefit from it.
Because the rescuers are convinced that the children survived. Fifteen days after the accident, he discovered the corpse of the aircraft in an upright position, nose to the ground in dense vegetation, with the body of the mother, the pilot and the indigenous representative on board.
But they also find gnawed fruit in the crash zone, scissors, diapers, and a makeshift shelter made from sticks and branches. The soldiers then discover a “makeshift shelter made of sticks and branches”, then a dog, scissors, and a hair band. Subsequently, they identify footprints that could be children’s.
“Based on the clues found, we conclude that the children are alive,” a general said on the radio at the end of May. “If they were dead, it would certainly be easy to find them because they would be immobile.”
wilson’s dog
Rescuers also found traces of a dog. What the children later confirm: during their stay in the jungle, they have indeed received a visit from an animal, which they draw during their hospitalization. A dog with light brown fur and pointy ears that matches Wilson. Participating in the search, he had become lost in the thick vegetation.
“The dog was with them, it left and came back (…) then it disappeared,” confirmed the children’s grandfather. Lesly also said that this dog accompanied them “for a while.”
The following day, June 9, the children were finally found by members of the local indigenous communities, committed to the hundred soldiers mobilized as part of the operation called “hope.” In total, about 2,656 km of jungle were covered to save the children.
Emaciated and weakened, but alive
A video released by the Colombian government shows them installed on a tarpaulin, emaciated, emaciated and particularly weak. If they are dehydrated, have some scratches and bites and Tien Noriel (the only male of the brothers) is too exhausted to walk, “his condition is acceptable”, announces the Colombian Defense Minister.
Another miracle: not a single animal accidentally attacked or injured during their forty days in the jungle.
When they were rescued, the children had been in the same place for four days. They are aware and the older one remembers everything.
“Lesly, holding the little one by the hand, ran towards me,” says one of the rescuers. “I took her in my arms, she told me: ‘I’m hungry’.”
Next to him lies the 5-year-old boy. “After a first hug and giving him something to eat, he got up and told me, very aware of what he was saying: ‘my mom is dead’”, he still remembers.
Rescuers comfort them, tell them they are friends and coming from family. The boy answers them: “I want bread and chorizo”. “They only thought about eating, eating, eating again,” continues the rescuer.
His state of health is progressing favorably
The children are transported by air and helicopter to the city of San José del Guaviare and then transported by medical plane to Bogotá. When they arrive, they are evacuated on stretchers and loaded into various ambulances.
After two days of care, “they are in a very good mood, they have colored and drawn. They like to talk (…), they are very willing”, indicates the deputy director of the Colombian Institute for the Protection of the Family (ICBF), although they still cannot eat normally.
More than a week after their rescue, the children’s health is evolving “favorably” but they continue to suffer from “nutritional deficits,” reported the Bogotá military hospital. Children in particular continue to be at “high risk” for possible infectious diseases due to their state of weakness. Therefore, they should remain hospitalized for another two to three weeks.
As for his future, nothing is decided yet. Because now they are at the center of a family feud. The ICBF will maintain guardianship of the minors until the dispute is resolved: relatives of their mother accuse the father of the two minors -he is not the father of the two eldest- of mistreatment, which the latter denies. The father of the two eldest has not appeared and the maternal grandmother requests custody of the four children.
Children rescued in Colombia: “40 days [de survie]it is huge, in a biotope as difficult as the Amazon jungle”, for Damien Lecouvey (Amazon specialist)
Colombia: the health of children who survived the jungle evolves “favorably”
Source: BFM TV
