Few could have imagined that survival knowledge in the deep jungle would help four children survive a plane crash for over 40 harrowing days without any adults by their side.
The “Miraculous” Seed
When the four Indigenous children were found last week after being stranded in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia for 40 days, rescuers noticed that the oldest, Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 13 years old, was chewing something between her teeth.
Eliecer Muñoz, one of the four Indigenous officers who came into contact with the children, stated, “We saw her chewing on some seeds slowly between her cheek and jawbone.”
Muñoz told CNN that the seeds she was chewing came from a native Amazon palm tree called Oenocarpus bataua, commonly referred to as “milpesos” in Colombia.
He explained that its fruit is rich in fat and that tribes in the Amazon use it to produce vegetable oil, but the seeds Lesly was chewing were not yet ripe when she was found.
Muñoz added: “She kept them in her mouth to warm them up, allowing her to share the fleshy part of the seed with her younger siblings. This is how the children managed to survive“.
Native Amazon Palm.
Since the children were brought home, journalists and survival experts have been trying to answer this question: How did these four children – the youngest of whom was just a baby – manage to survive in the Amazon rainforest for so long?
Meanwhile, it took a team of over 130 special forces soldiers and some of the most skilled Indigenous guides in the country to locate them.
The stretch of forest where the four children were found is one of the most remote and harshest areas in Colombia, teeming with wildlife such as jaguars, anacondas, and poisonous insects, where rainfall can last over 15 hours each day and visibility is sometimes limited to just 10 meters due to thick vegetation.
When found, Lesly and her siblings were dangerously malnourished. For more than a month without any adult supervision, the children appeared to have survived on wild fruits and over 1.3 kg of cassava flour, a traditional protein-rich food in the Amazon diet, which they salvaged from the debris of the plane crash.
The group of four children also discovered one of the hundreds of survival kits left behind in the forest during the search and rescue operation, including small food rations, electrolytes, and a lighter.
Henry Guerrero, an Indigenous elder and member of the team that found them, stated: “We understood that they only used one of the military kits; the rest was just fruits, seeds, and water.”
Indigenous Pride
Only those with extensive knowledge of the forest and remarkable resilience could survive there for over a month – let alone keeping three others alive.
Weeks prior, most of Colombia was following the story, unaware of what skills Lesly and her siblings possessed. However, their uncle, Fidencio Valencia, remained hopeful: “They understood the jungle… even though they are just children, we hoped they were alive and could access water,” he told reporters on May 19.
His words were proven right by reality.
The children have yet to appear in public and are recovering at the central military hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. On June 14, a statement from the hospital indicated that the children had survived the critical phase but were still considered at high risk due to infectious diseases and severe malnutrition.
Their survival techniques demonstrate impressive knowledge of flora and foresight.
During the search, rescue teams found discarded fruits like avicure, a wild plant similar to passion fruit, that the children had eaten while alone in the jungle. Milpesos seeds were also found along their trail, and Colombian authorities believe Lesly had taken some baby formula from the wreckage to feed her 11-month-old sibling, Cristin, for several days.
When found, the children had bottles they used to collect water, either from streams or rainwater, which is abundant in the forest.
This achievement represents a proud moment for the Indigenous community of the Amazon. “Thanks to these children, we have ‘defeated technology’“, Guerrero beamed at a recent press conference in Bogotá. “Thanks to these children, we realize that we, the Indigenous people, are very important.”
While the survival of the group of four children remains a miracle, it is undoubtedly due in large part to their traditional knowledge of the forest, where they were born and raised. While Colombia deployed its military to search, it was four Indigenous guides who were the first to discover the children.
Notably, Lesly has been praised not only for her survival but also for ensuring her younger siblings survived after losing their mother in the plane crash.
“One of the traditional roles of Indigenous women is to care for their siblings as if they were their own children. A sister essentially becomes a second mother, and I think that’s how Lesly was raised,” said Nelly Kuiru, an Indigenous activist from the Murui settlement in La Chorrera.
