(GoRealNewsNow.com) – Four indigenous children have been discovered alive in the Amazon jungle, having survived for 40 days on their own, after their plane crashed last month in the South American country of Colombia.
The children were traveling with their mother and two other adults from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare on a Cessna single-engine propeller plane.
The small aircraft disappeared from the radar after the pilot declared an emergency due to engine failure. All adults perished after the crash, but the children aged 13, 9, 4, and 11 months survived.
On Sunday, the children were already recovering at a military hospital in Colombia, where they will remain for two weeks for treatment, the AP reports, as cited by The Washington Times.
Family members say some of the embattled kids are already speaking and eager to do more than just lying on a bed.
The oldest child in the family, 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, told her stepfather, Manuel Ranoque, the father of the two youngest children, that their mother was alive for four days after the May 1 crash.
He revealed that before she died, the mother probably told the kid to leave the wreckage site to be able to survive.
Fidencio Valencia, an uncle, said the kids hid in tree trunks to protect themselves from snakes, mosquitos, and other animals in the jungle.
“They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating,” he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota.
Colombia’s Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said the kids were being rehydrated and still unable to eat.
According to Dairo Juvenal Mucutuy, another uncle, one of the children told him he wanted to start walking.
“Uncle, I want shoes, I want to walk, but my feet hurt,” the boy said in his words.
“The only thing that I told the kid (was), ‘When you recover, we will play soccer,” he added.
The children, who are members of the Huitoto indigenous group, survived by eating cassava flour and seeds. Their familiarity with the rainforest’s fruits was vital for their survival.
4 children who survived 40 days in Colombian jungle recover as harrowing details emergehttps://t.co/ungF0ZXu9U pic.twitter.com/n4Xqv0lcq6
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) June 11, 2023
