(Bogota) “I’m hungry” and “my mother is dead” were the first words to their rescuers of the four indigenous children, found after 40 days of wandering in the Colombian jungle. Two days after this miraculous rescue, Colombian public television broadcast a video of the moment of this incredible encounter on Sunday.
In these moving images, we see the four haggard children, all terribly emaciated, the smallest in the arms of one of her rescuers.
“We met the children. Thank God ! commented one of them, members of the Native Guard. One sings, another smokes tobacco (a sacred plant among the natives) and thanks with joy.
Lesly (13), Soleiny (9), Tien Noriel (5) and Cristin (1) were found alive on Friday afternoon by these rescuers, wandering alone in the jungle since the crash on 1er May of the small Cessna 206 plane in which they were traveling with their mother, the pilot and a relative. All three adults died in the crash.
Invited to the set of the RTVC (the public television channel), the team of natives who found the children in the jungle recounted this extraordinary moment.
magic turtle
“The eldest daughter, Lesly, holding the little one by the hand, ran towards me. I took her in my arms, she said to me: ‘I’m hungry’,” said Nicolas Ordoñez Gomes, one of the team members.
“I asked where the boy is. He was lying next to it. After a first hug, and giving him some food, he got up and said to me, very conscious of what he was saying: ‘my mum is dead’”.
“We immediately followed up with softer words, saying that we were friends, that we came from the family, from the father, from the uncle. That we were family! He replied: “I want farina and chorizo” “(bread and sausage, editor’s note)”, detailed Mr. Ordoñez Gomes.
“Half an hour earlier, we had found a turtle on the way,” said another member of the team. “In the beliefs of our elders, if you find a turtle, you can ask it for a wish, and that wish will come true. I told her “find me the children”, even if we wanted to eat her afterwards. When we found the children, we threw it away, we only thought of the little ones”.
The on-set story of these first aids was particularly moving, with the children’s rescuers wearing caps, colored scarves and sticks (the classic attributes of the native guards).
The commander of the search operations, General Pedro Sanchez, was also present, in uniform and a burgundy beret on his head. “They are the heroes,” he commented, to the attention of the fifteen or so natives present.
“We were a little desperate, because we had been looking for them for too long,” another rescuer from the same team, Henri Guerrero, told AFP. Falling on them “was an immense happiness”.
“What was admirable was that everyone was aware.” The eldest “remembered everything”. “They wanted to eat rice pudding, bread. It was only “to eat, to eat”. They were on a towel on the floor, they had been in the same place for four days […]they couldn’t take it anymore.
“They stayed near a stream. They were filling a small soda bottle with water,” Guerrero said. Nothing ever happened to them,” not a single animal attack or accidental injury. “They did very well.”
“I spoke with the eldest only. She told me that she listened to all the messages from the helicopters, saying that we were looking for them, the message from the grandmother who said not to move or not to be afraid of the dog Wilson looking for them. They listened to the messages but did not know where to go in this very large, very difficult area”.
Where is Wilson?
Three days after the rescue, the children continued to rest out of sight and the excitement of the media in a room at the military hospital in Bogota, where they were airlifted the very evening of their rescue.
They “talk little”, according to their relatives, but revealed that their mother had survived the plane crash for four days before succumbing to her injuries, according to their father Manuel Miller Ranoque Morales.
“They play with gifts, […] they are good, they are in good hands. […] We can’t give them too much food at the moment. This is all a process that will take time,” commented their grandfather.
The Colombian press began giving details of their ordeal. The children were able to use on their journey a mosquito net, a towel, a minimum of camping equipment, two mobile phones (with rapidly depleted batteries), a flashlight and a small music Box.
After more than a month of fruitless search, the army was about to reduce its deployed assets. Despite their rations, the special forces commandos each lost between 3 and 10 kilos, with exhausting daily hunts starting at 5 a.m. “Every day that started, we said to ourselves: today we find them! “, told one of these elite soldiers, quoted by a weekly.
The army today says it is continuing its search for Wilson, a detection dog lost in the jungle. The name and photos of this six-year-old Malinois are now displayed on windows in Bogota.