How 4 children survived for 40 days in the Amazon jungle after plane crash

Four Indigenous children escaped an Amazon plane crash. They wandered alone in the forest for 40 days before being found alive by Colombian soldiers. Officials in the South American country confirmed their rescue on Friday, giving a happy climax to a drama filled with highs and lows as rescuers desperately combed the rainforest for the children. As the children receive treatment at a military hospital in Bogota, everyone wonders how they survived in the jungle for so long. Let’s take a closer look. The survival of the children Lost for 40 days in the Colombian Amazon, the siblings, aged 13, nine, four and one, survived eating seeds, roots and plants they knew were edible thanks to their upbringing. And it was in part down to the local knowledge of Indigenous adults involved in the search alongside Colombian troops that they were ultimately found alive. “The survival of the children is a sign of the knowledge and relationship with the natural environment that is taught starting in the mother’s womb,” according to the National Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia (OPIAC). The kids are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group. The four siblings survived a small plane crash on 1 May that took the lives of the pilot, their mother and a third adult. The family of the children clung to hope that the siblings’ familiarity with the jungle would see them through. The children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane went down. The Cessna single-engine propeller plane was carrying three adults and the children when the pilot declared an emergency due to engine failure. The small aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a search for survivors began. The “children of the bush,” as their grandfather called them, survived eating yucca flour that was aboard the doomed plane, and scavenging from relief parcels dropped by search helicopters. [caption id=“attachment_12724502” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Exhausted but happy, four Indigenous children who had been missing for more than a month in the Colombian Amazon rainforest were reunited with their relatives Saturday, in a happy ending to a nerve-racking saga that gripped the nation. AFP[/caption] But they also ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible from their upbringing in the Amazon region, Luis Acosta of the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), told AFP. Ranoque, the father of the youngest child, said the rescue shows how as an “Indigenous population, we are trained to search” in the middle of the jungle. “We proved to the world that we found the plane… we found the children,” he added. Some Indigenous community members burned incense as part of a ceremony outside the Bogota military hospital Sunday to give thanks for the rescue of the kids. Luis Acosta, the coordinator of the Indigenous guard that was part of the search in the Amazon, said the children were found as part of what he called a “combination of ancestral wisdom and Western wisdom… between a military technique and a traditional technique.” ‘Spiritual force’ Acosta, who took part in search operations, said the children were imbued with “spiritual force.” That is a shared perception among Indigenous leaders, and Acosta noted that a guardian was to be posted outside the military hospital where doctors were attending to the children to help accompany them “spiritually.” “We have a particular connection to nature,” Javier Betancourt, another ONIC leader, told AFP. “The world needs this kind of special relation with nature, to favour those like the Indigenous who live in the jungle and take care of it.” During the search, soldiers worked side by side with Indigenous trackers for 20 days.

" ‘Miracle’: Four Children Found Alive 40 Days After Plane Crash In Remote Jungle"
After a plane crash which unfortunately caused the death of all adults on the flight, four children were rescued after 40 days in the jungle of Columbia. They were transported to a hospital to be…

— Gray Wolf (@graywolf442) June 12, 2023

President Gustavo Petro praised what he called a “meeting of Indigenous and military knowledge” that he said showed respect for the jungle. Army helicopters broadcast recordings of the childrens’ grandmother telling them in the Indigenous Huitoto language to stay put in one spot until rescuers reached them. “It was President Petro who brought us together,” Acosta told local media, referring to soldiers and Indigenous experts. “In an initial meeting, eight days before our search began, the president told us we needed to go with the army because the army couldn’t do it alone,” he added. A winning combo More than 80 volunteers from Indigenous territories in the departments of Caqueta, Putumayo, Meta and Amazonas joined around 100 soldiers in what was dubbed “Operation Hope.” It was an unusual union of forces. In many of Colombia’s Indigenous territories, armed outlaw groups roam and easily coerce native peoples, who protect their lands with rudimentary weapons. Relations between Indigenous communities and the armed forces are also strained. [caption id=“attachment_12724512” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Fidencio Valencia, the grandfather of the four Indigenous children who were found alive after being lost for 40 days in the Colombian Amazon rainforest following a plane crash, speaks to the media at the entrance of the Military Hospital, where the children were hospitalised, in Bogota. AFP[/caption] But in the Guaviare department, rescuers from separate groups set their differences aside to work together. While soldiers planned operational details, native searchers held rituals to communicate with jungle “spirits,” using mambe, a paste made of coca leaf and ash, as well as chirrinchi, a fermented drink. Using machetes, rescuers felled trees and marked them with spray paint to guide the children. Indigenous medicinal knowledge was also used to adapt to the difficult jungle conditions, treating scratches, splinters, insect bites, exhaustion and physical pain. The indigenous people have “worked in the rain, in storms and in many difficult situations, but always with the hope and spiritual faith that (the children) could be found,” Acosta said. It all led to the discovery of the siblings by an Indigenous tracker in an area that hadn’t yet been explored. With inputs from AFP Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.