Four-year-old trekked miles in subzero Siberia
Saglana Salchak had been living with her grandparents at their remote farm deep in the taiga forest near the Mongolian border, more than 12 miles from the nearest village and five miles from their closest neighbour.
One morning in February, the child awoke to find that her 60-year-old grandmother was not moving. After talking to her blind grandfather, she decided to walk to the next farm for help.
The four-year-old took only a box of matches in case she had to light a fire and set out into the early-morning darkness, where temperatures were -34 ºC. It took her several hours to walk the five miles along a river bank through deep snow. Fortunately, she did not get stuck in the snow or meet any of the wolves that had at times attacked her grandparents’ livestock.
“There are many wolves in Tuva,” Semyon Rubtsov, head of the regional search and rescue group, told a Russian newspaper. “They eat the livestock – the herders moan about them. She could easily have met a pack of wolves in the darkness.”
After five difficult miles, Saglana nearly missed her neighbours “house and would have passed it if one of them had not seen her. They called medical personnel from the village, who, after checking the girl, made the trek back to her grandparents” place. There, they discovered that the grandmother had died of a heart attack.
Saglana told the newspaper she was not scared making the trip through the forest alone. “I just walked, walked and got there,” she said. She admitted, however, that she had been cold and had “really wanted to eat”.
Although she caught a cold, Saglana quickly recovered at the local hospital and is now living at a social centre, where she just celebrated her fifth birthday. Local media have declared her a hero.
Saglana’s mother and stepfather look after their own herd of horses in another part of the region. The social policy ministry offered the girl a free trip to a sanatorium with her mother, Eleonora, when she returns from herding in May.
But, later, the Tuva investigative committee opened a criminal case against Eleonora Salchak for leaving a minor in danger. “She knew that the elderly grandparents could not guarantee the child’s safety,” it said in a press release. Saglana’s mother could face up to a year in prison. The committee said it was also investigating the actions of social policy officials in the girl’s district.
Sayana Mongush, an activist and journalist in the regional capital of Kyzyl, said that it was shocking that Saglana’s grandparents didn’t have a phone or internet connection.
“Even in Soviet times, herders in Tuva had material privileges and radio communications,” she said. “But now, in the 21st century, a four-year-old child has to go on foot because there’s no connectivity. This is nonsense and the crime was committed not by the girl’s mother but by the authorities.”
© Guardian News and Media 2017 First published in The Guardian, 14/03/17 (Adaptado).
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