How teen helped her siblings survive 40 days in the Amazon
Lesly liked to play “survival games” when she was growing up but could never have imagined that one day this would save not only her life but that of her three siblings.
The 13-year-old guided her sisters Soleiny, nine, and Tien Noriel, five, and her one-year-old brother Cristian Neriman through the Colombian Amazon rainforest for more than a month until rescuers saved them.
The four Indigenous children wandered alone after surviving a light aircraft crash in which their mother and two other adults died.
The remote area is home to jaguars, snakes and other predators, as well as armed drug smuggling groups. But Lesly knew the jungle well, and had often played at setting up “little camps” with Soleiny.
“When Lesly played as a kid, she armed herself and I think she did this,” Damarys Mucutuy, her aunt, told reporters. “Lesly knew which fruits you could eat because in the jungle there are many poisonous fruits. And she knew how to look after a baby.”
Indigenous people, who know the rainforest well, joined sniffer dogs, soldiers, helicopters and aircraft during the desperate search.
When soldiers came across the children in the dense jungle, they were severely dehydrated and had insect bites all over their bodies but were otherwise healthy.
The soldiers posed for a photograph with the bewildered youngsters, who were attended by medics. Looking thin and frail, the children were transported by army medical plane to a military hospital in the Colombian capital of Bogota.
‘Children of the bush’
The children, members of the Huitoto Indigenous group, boarded a Cessna 206 plane on 1 May with their mother, but it disappeared from the radar minutes after taking off from a deep Amazon area known as Araracuara on the 350-kilometre (217-mile) journey to the town of San Jose del Guaviare.
The siblings and their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, were flying to be with their father, Manuel Ranoque, who had fled the area after being threatened by crime gangs. The family hoped to start a new life in Bogota – but it was not to be.
It took Indigenous trackers 16 days to find the wreckage nose down in the thick jungle foliage. The bodies of the adults were among the mangled remains of the plane, but the children were nowhere to be found.
A baby’s dummy, a half-eaten apple, nappies, and a hair band were found nearby. Rescuers realised the children were still alive. Operation Hope began.
After following clues including footprints, a baby’s bottle and makeshift shelters in the jungle, the rescuers finally found the children when they dropped food and leaflets and played a message from the children’s grandmother over a speaker telling them not to move.
Their grandfather said they had subsisted on seeds, part of the Huitoto diet. “They are happy to see the family… they have all their senses,” Fidencio Valencia, their grandfather, told reporters after visiting them. “They are children of the bush.”
He said they “survived at first by eating a little flour [made from cassava, which was on board the plane], then seeds”.
Colombian Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, who visited the children in the hospital, said they are recovering, but could not yet eat solid food.
“It is thanks to her [Lesly’s] courage and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle,” Mr Velasquez said.
General Pedro Sanchez, who led the search operation, credited Indigenous people involved in the rescue effort with finding the children. “We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle!” was the message he told reporters he received on Friday. “Miracle” is army code for a child found alive and the repetition meant all four had survived.
Soldiers involved in the rescue prayed for the children every morning.
“Each dawn, when we started the day, we said to ourselves: Today is the day, we will find them,” a soldier told Colombian media. “Miracles happen and almost all of us are fathers, we see our children reflected in these children. We are going to find them.”
This time, a miracle came true.
