“I’m hungry” and “my mother is dead” are the words to the rescuers of four indigenous children who wandered in the Colombian jungle for 40 days. Two days after the miraculous rescue, Colombian public television broadcast a video of the moment of this incredible encounter on Sunday.
• Read more: Tired, but ‘happy’: Children rescued from jungle in Bogotá
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In these moving images, shot on a mobile phone, we see four tiny, very thin children in the arms of one of her rescuers.
“We met the children. Thank God!” commented one of them, a member of the Native Guard, as one sings, another smokes tobacco (a sacred plant among the natives) and gives joyful thanks.
Leslie (13), Solini (9), Dien Noriel (5) and Christine (1) were found alive by rescue workers Friday afternoon after wandering alone in the woods since the May 1 crash of their small Cessna 206 plane. In it they traveled with their mother, pilot and cousin. All three adults died in the accident.
A moving story
Invited to the RTVC (public television) set, a group of natives who saw the children in the forest described the extraordinary moment.
“Eldest daughter Leslie ran towards me, holding the boy by the hand. I took her in my arms and she told me: “I’m hungry,” said Nicolas Ordonez Gomez, one of the team members.
“I asked where the boy was. He was lying next to it. After the first hug and feeding him, he got up and told me, he felt good saying: “My mother is dead”.
“We are friends, we immediately followed the gentle words that we came from the family, from the father, from the uncle. That we were family! He replied: “I have flour and chorizo” (bread and sausage, author’s note)”, Mr. Narrated by Ordonez Gomez.
“Half an hour ago, we found a turtle on the way,” said another member of the group. “In the belief of our elders, if you see a turtle, you can make a wish and that wish will come true. I told her to “find me the kids” even though we wanted to eat her later. When we saw the children, we threw them away, thinking only of the little children”.
The story in this collection of first aid kits is particularly moving, with children’s saviors wearing copper-colored leather, hats, colored scarves and sticks (the classic attributes of native guards).
The commander of the search operations, General Pedro Sánchez, was in uniform and wearing a burgundy beret on his head. “They’re heroes,” he commented to the attention of the fifteen or so natives present.
A long relief
Three days after their rescue, the children continued to rest, and appeared to the media’s excitement in a room at a military hospital in Bogotá.
According to their relatives, they “talk a little” but revealed that their mother survived the plane crash for four days, succumbing to her injuries, said their father, Manuel Miller Ranoc Morales.
“This is a miracle of God. We thank God for keeping the children alive,” said Mr. Ranok continued. “We as tribal people have shown the world what we are capable of. We found the plane, we found the children,” he said.
“I’m waiting for the children to recover (…) It’s not so easy to question them,” he repeated after what they had experienced, the crowd of journalists.
“After going through such a tragedy, they need to regain their strength (…). We can’t really talk” commented grandfather Fidencio Valencia. “They play with gifts (…) They are good, they are in good hands”. Can’t feed them more now. All this is a process that takes time.
The father objected to the airing of his children’s photos in the hospital room on “social networks”, saying it was “unfair”.
At the request of authorities, most of the photos released so far have obscured the children’s faces, until this Sunday when new photos and RTVC video showed them to be very emaciated.
Hard research
Colombian newspapers began to give details of their ordeal. The children were able to use a mosquito net, a towel, minimal camping equipment, two mobile phones (batteries that ran out quickly), a flashlight and a small music box on their trip.
After more than a month of fruitless searching, the army was about to reduce its deployed routes. Despite their diets, the Special Forces commandos lost between 3 and 10 kg each, as the daily hunt began at 5:00 am. “Every day that started, we said to ourselves: Today we found them!” said one of these elite players quoted by the weekly magazine.
The Army said today that the search for a detection dog named Wilson, who went missing in the forest, is continuing. The name and photos of this six-year-old Malinois are now displayed in windows in Bogotá.
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