YAHOO
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The crash occurred on May 1 in the Amazon jungle and the children were found 40 days later.
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Bodies of the three adults on the plane — including the childrens’ mother — were found in the area.
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The oldest child told the father of the youngest two that her mother lived for four days after the crash.
The four Indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle after their plane crashed have shared limited but harrowing details of their ordeal with their family, including that their mother survived the crash for days before she died.
The kids, aged 13, 9, 4, and 11 months, are expected to remain in a hospital for at least two weeks receiving treatment after their rescue Friday. Still, some are already speaking and wanting to do more than lay on a bed, according to family members.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four surviving children — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — told him their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
Ranoque said the mother likely would have told them before she died to “go away,” apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive. He provided no more details.
Fidencio Valencia, a child’s uncle, told media outlet Noticias Caracol the children were starting to talk, and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals, and mosquitoes. He said they were exhausted.
“They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating,” he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota, Colombia. On Saturday, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said the children were rehydrated and couldn’t eat food yet.
Later, Valencia provided new details of the children’s recovery two days after the rescue: “They have been drawing. Sometimes they need to let off steam.” He said family members are not talking much with them to give them space and time to recover from the shock.
The children traveled 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 four 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.
Dairo Juvenal Mucutuy, another uncle, told local media that one of the kids said he wanted to start walking.
“Uncle, I want shoes, I want to walk, but my feet hurt,” Mucutuy said the child told him.
“The only thing that I told the kid (was), ‘When you recover, we will play soccer,'” he said.
Authorities and family members have said the family survived eating cassava flour and seeds and that some familiarity with the rainforest’s fruits was also key to their survival. The kids are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.
