Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

¿Quién Sabe?71tortured, interrogated, or both was still very much on all our minds,and we all agreed that there were lines we simply would not cross.These lines had become apparent to us a few days earlier as we wereclimbing down from the airplane. We were negotiating steep terrain,and we noticed that one of the FARC, a slight, delicate woman whocould not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, was looking verypale. She wobbled on for a few hours in that state. Suddenly she passedout. Her compatriots just stood around staring at her, and the three ofus stepped through the circle of gawkers.Looking at her on the ground, we could see that she wasn’t sweating,which was sure sign of dehydration, or possibly even heatstroke.We decided that she needed to be cooled immediately. We took off hershirt and loosened her pants to help circulate air around her as best wecould. We elevated her feet and gave her water. She had on the usualguerrilla rubber boots, so we pulled them off. That seemed to help. Listeningto our suggestion, the FARC began to fan her. All those thingswere doing the trick, but then she started shivering. Keith still had hisfleece jacket with him, so he gave it to her.In one sense we’d crossed a line. We’d helped one of the FARC bygiving this young girl aid and comfort. But we learned then that therewas another line that we wouldn’t cross. Just because we were beingtreated inhumanely didn’t mean that we had to give up our humanity.All three of us had kids, and both Marc and Keith commented at thetime that they were thinking of their daughters, who were respectivelynine and fourteen at the time. Looking at this girl was a lot like lookingat their own children. How could they have walked away? How couldany of us not do the right thing, the thing we would have wanted for usor our own children?Very early on, Keith said to us that there was the right thing to doand there was the wrong thing to do. There was the easy thing to doand the hard thing to do. We had to do the hard right thing, as much