The Survivors

Did you hear about the four children who were left alone for more than a month in the Amazon jungle after the plane they were flying in crashed?

It’s an unbelievable story with a (mostly) happy ending.

The truly sad part is that the crew and the mother of the children died in the crash.

The four children – 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9-year-old Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 4-year-old Tien Ranoque Mucutuy and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy – are currently recovering in a hospital in the Colombian capital Bogota after being taken there by air ambulance flown by the Colombian Air Force on Saturday, officials said.

When I heard about the crash I had very little hope that the children could survive it. The rainforest is so thick and the children are so young that it just seemed impossible.

Here is how they survived according to CNN :

“Eating cassava flour helped save the lives of four children found alive in the Amazon jungle more than a month after their plane crashed, according to a Colombian military special forces official.

The children ate “three kilograms (six pounds) of farina,” a coarse cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region, said spokesperson Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez.

“Days after the crash, they ate the farina which they had carried there… but they (eventually) ran out of food and decided to look for a place where they could stay alive,” Suárez said.

“They were malnourished but fully conscious and lucid when we found them,” he added.

“Their indigenous origins allowed them to acquire a certain immunity against diseases in the jungle and having knowledge of the jungle itself – knowing what to eat and what not to eat – as well as finding water kept them alive – which would not have been possible (if they) were not used to that type of hostile environment.”

The children’s disappearance sparked a massive military-led search operation that saw more than one hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the deep forest.”

The special forces are now concentrating their efforts on trying to recover their rescue dog, “Wilson”. He did find the children and stayed with them for a few days.

The children are slowly recovering but their father is beyond thrilled that they were all found alive!

What a story!