“A Safari through Darién”
A woman cleans a child's face in Turbo, Colombia, July 08, 2024. EFE/ Carlos Ortega

“A Safari through Darién”

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Turbo, Colombia, Jul 16 (EFE).- By Paula Cabaleiro

Olef and Zeus, two restless one-and-a-half-year-old twins, think they are “going on a safari to look at animals.” This is what their mother told them on the bus ride from Venezuela to hide the real reason for the trip: to cross the dangerous Darién jungle between Colombia and Panama and continue through Central America to the United States.

Carrying one of the babies in a sling on her chest and the other on her back, Venezuelan mother Yasmeri Jalmeida prepares for the grueling 97-kilometer trek through the jungle to join her husband in Panama.

Although she has been climbing hills and walking “more than 70 kilometers” with the toddlers for months, Yasmeri Jalmeida knows this trip will be challenging for the three of them, but she is optimistic because she hopes to find a better life.

Like them, thousands of families with children embark – amid the cries of the youngest, who do not understand why they have not been home for so long – on the boats that leave from the Colombian city of Turbo to Acandí, on the border with Panama, where the wild path of the Darién begins.

In the first four months of 2024, a record number of children crossed the Darién, 40% more than in the same period of the previous year, according to Unicef, with more than 30,000 children making the journey.

One of those children, about to embark, meets Ángela, an Aldeas Infantiles worker who assists families; she gives him a stamp with a smiling face and tells him: “This is to protect you.”

An Aldeas Infantiles staff member talks to children in Turbo, Colombia, 08 July 2024. EFE/ Carlos Ortega

Waiting in tents

The coastal town of Turbo, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Urabá, is full of tents and makeshift shelters where families try to scrape together the 350 dollars for the “travel package” – a dubious term for the borderline illegal activity of guiding migrants – that guarantees them a guide who will take them through the jungle to the border with Panama, known as the “flags” hill.

Every morning, rain or shine, hundreds of families wake up and dismantle their tents in an area the migrants call “the dining room” because it serves 1,500 meals a day.

Luz del Carmen, a 44-year-old woman, sleeps in one of the tents, which she takes down and dries before seven in the morning with the help of her four children.

They have been in Turbo for 16 days and she hopes that they will be able to leave soon, although she admits to EFE that they have not yet collected enough money to buy the package.

However, they have already prepared water, food, medicine and tents for the nights in the jungle, which could last up to a week, walking along narrow paths, climbing the slippery hills and crossing rivers that could rise at any moment and sweep them away.

The tour company promised them they could pay for half a package (175 dollars per person): “They say you pay for half a package and stay in Acandí” until the local guides make a “sweep” and pick up everyone waiting on the shore, explains the mother.

A path fraught with accidents

The Darién is one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world, due to the lack of infrastructure adapted to the massive passage of people, and is the setting for slips on steep roads, falls into abysses, drowning in rivers, and dangers from wild animals and insects.

The routes are controlled on the Colombian side by the Clan del Golfo, the country’s largest criminal group, and once in Panama, criminals and other groups subject migrants to robberies and even gang rapes.

There are also no figures to reflect the tragedy: in the Darién, they know how many people are leaving – more than 195,000 so far this year – but not the deaths that have occurred.

Add to this the closure of trails and border crossings ordered by the new Panamanian president, Jose Raul Mulino, which began with barbed wire fences in the middle of the jungle. EFE

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