The four Colombian children found on Friday June 9, after forty days spent in the Amazon rainforest, gave their loved ones the first elements of their long wandering. According to testimony collected by the father of two of the minors, Manuel Miller Ranoque Morales, the children’s mother “stayed alive for four days” after the plane they were on crashed before succumbing to her injuries. .
“Before dying, the mother said to them: ‘Go ahead, go’ [join your father]”, explained Mr. Ranoque, during a press conference in front of the military hospital in Bogota where they are treated. the children, who according to him, “speak little”.
“I am waiting for the children to recover (…). It’s not so easy to ask them questions” after what they went through, he said again, pressed by a crowd of journalists. “After going through such a tragedy, they need to regain their strength (…). We couldn’t really talk, commented the children’s grandfather, Fidencio Valencia. They are playing with the gifts [they have received], they are fine, they are in good hands (…) We cannot give them too much food at the moment. This is all a process that will take time. »
“It is a miracle of God. We thank God who kept the children alive,” Mr. Ranoque continued. “As indigenous people, we showed the world what we were capable of. We found the plane, we found the children,” he said.
Lesly (13 years old), Soleiny (9 years old), Tien Noriel (5 years old) and Cristin (1 year old) were found alive Friday afternoon by the rescuers, while wandering alone in the forest since the crash on the 1st 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 accident.
” I’m hungry “
The plane belonging to the company Avianline Charters had left an area of ??forest known as Araracuara to go to San José del Guaviare (south), one of the main cities of the Colombian Amazon, some 350 km , before disappearing from the radar. The pilot had just reported a problem with the engine.
The soldiers found him between May 15 and 16, vertically, his nose planted on the ground, in the middle of dense vegetation, the pilot dead in the cockpit. The indigenous chief and the mother of the family were also found dead, without the soldiers saying where exactly.
RTVC, Colombia’s public television, aired video on Sunday afternoon of the moment when the four children who had been wandering in the jungle for forty days met their native rescuers. In these images filmed on a mobile phone, we see the four haggard children, the smallest in the arms of one of her rescuers. All are terribly emaciated.
Their saviors, members of the native guard, sing, smoke tobacco (a sacred plant among the natives) and give thanks with joy. Invited on set of the RTVC, they recounted the first moments of the meeting. “The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me. Lesly said, ‘I’m hungry,'” said Nicolas Ordonez Gomes, one of the team members. One of the two boys was lying down. He got up, and he said to me, “my mom is dead.” “We followed up right away with positive words, saying that we were friends, that we came from the family, from the father, from the uncle. That we were family! “, detailed Mr. Ordonez Gomes.
Manuel Miller Ranoque Morales had protested earlier in the day against the publication “on social networks” of photos of his children in their hospital room: “It’s unfair”, he said. 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.
The father threatened by a dissident armed group of the FARC
Mr. Ranoque also returned to the threats at the origin of the family’s departure by plane from Guaviare. “I am threatened by the Carolina Ramirez Front” of FARC dissidence, he said without specifying the reasons for these threats. “I know these unscrupulous people can start pushing again and I will never allow it. They said they were going to pick me up to Bogota (…) All they want is economic interest and as long as you don’t join them, you are an enemy,” he said. he accuses.
This whole southern Amazonian part of the country is a historical stronghold of the FARC, which imposes a revolutionary “tax” there. The search for the children by the army was also a race against time to prevent this armed group, with which the government had just broken a fragile ceasefire, from getting their hands on the young survivors first. .
After more than a month of fruitless search, the army was about to reduce the means deployed when it discovered the children. “Every day that started, we said to ourselves: today we find them! “, told a soldier, quoted by a weekly. The army today says it is continuing its search for a detection dog lost in the jungle while on the trail of the children.
