Four children survived 40 days in the jungle

It wasn't magic. They were educated and prepared.

The “hot articles” tab in my Twitter feed had an NPR headline that caught my attention: “4 children lost for 40 days after a plane crash are found alive in Colombian jungle.”

Given that I worry about my three kids getting lost in the Mall of America for 40 minutes, I found it amazing that four young people survived alone in a jungle for over a month.

Sadly, nowhere in my amazement did I consider that these children would have special knowledge that kept them alive. They were lucky or something.

As this Tweeter, Sandy Grande, points out, that’s a problem:

The NPR story I read kinda addressed Sandy’s point in two places.

Here’s the first quote:

No details were released on how the four siblings aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months managed to survive on their own for so long, though they belong to an Indigenous group that lives in the remote region.

and, the second:

They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

The plane crash survivors “had some knowledge” that served them well. Ok, I needed to know more.

I found a BBC-Europe story (“How 4 children survived 40 days in hostile Colombian jungle”) that filled in a lot of blanks for me about what that “knowledge” was.

Read this long passage to see if you agree:

If there were ever children well-prepared to tackle such an ordeal, the Mucutuy family were them.

Huitoto people learn hunting, fishing and gathering from an early age, and their grandfather Fidencio Valencia told reporters that the eldest children, Lesly and Soleiny, were well acquainted with the jungle.

Speaking to Colombian media the children's aunt, Damarys Mucutuy, said the family would regularly play a "survival game" together growing up.

"When we played, we set up like little camps," she recalled. Thirteen-year-old Lesly, she added, "knew what fruits she can't eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby".

After the crash, Lesly built makeshift shelters from branches held together with her hair ties.

She also recovered Fariña, a type of flour, from the wreckage of the Cessna 206 plane they had been travelling in.

The children survived on the flour until it ran out and then they ate seeds, Edwin Paki, one of the indigenous leaders who took part in the search effort, told reporters.

"There's a fruit, similar to passionfruit, called avichure," he said. "They were looking for seeds to eat from an avichure tree about a kilometre and a half from the site of the plane crash."

Astrid Cáceres, head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said the timing of their ordeal meant the "the jungle was in harvest" and they could eat fruit that was in bloom.

But they still faced significant challenges surviving in the inhospitable environment.

Speaking to BBC Mundo on Saturday, indigenous expert Alex Rufino said the children were in "a very dark, very dense jungle, where the largest trees in the region are".

And while there are leaves with which the children could purify water, he warned that "others are poisonous".

"It is an area that has not been explored. The towns are small, and they are next to the river, not in the jungle," he added.

In addition to avoiding predators, the children also endured intense rainstorms and may have had to evade armed groups said to be active in the jungle.

At one stage, the children were forced to defend themselves from a wild dog, President Petro said.

But Mr Rufino noted that a 13-year-old raised in an indigenous community would already possess many of the skills needed to thrive in such an environment.

John Moreno, leader of the Guanano group in Vaupes, in the south-eastern part of Colombia where the children were raised, said they had been "raised by their grandmother", a widely respected indigenous elder.

"They used what they learned in the community, relied on their ancestral knowledge in order to survive," he said.

These young people were taught to feed themselves in an environment where making the wrong choice could end in poisoning; purify water using natural methods; develop flour from plants; defend themselves against wildlife; evade adults who might harm them; and shelter themselves in hostile weather conditions.

It says so much about what young people can learn at early ages. Our bar is so low, especially for children we assume are disabled by poverty.

How would our approach to education change if we believed, like the Huitoto people, that schooling was a life-or-death endeavor?

I mean, life is a jungle. Let’s not be NPR.