August 29, 1988
University senior Stephen Koneman is home.
After being held 10 months by guerrillas in Colombia, Koneman, a 22-year-old geography student, and his friend Jason McLachlan, 21, were released Aug. 15 in the southern region of Colombia to Roman Catholic Bishop Jose Luis Serna Alzate. The two students returned to Chicago Aug. 18.
Koneman and McLAchlan were captured Oct. 4, by a leftist guerrilla group, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces or FARC, the Spanish acronym for the organization. Koneman said they were captured while canoeing along the Putumayo River located on the border between Colombia and Peru. The river region is densely forested, still relatively unexplored and used heavily by Colombian drug traffickers.
“It’s quite a shock re-entering [the United States],” Koneman said in a telephone interview Thursday. It’s kind of amazing to me that it has become such a big story,” he said.
Koneman said he has had to adjust from the living conditions in the jungles of southern Colombia to the busy streets of Chicago. “Everything is here,” he said. “All the conveniences—there is just so much stimulation here.
“You spend so much time with a few books and a magazine every once in a while and then you have all these things to do.”
But Koneman said he was treated well by the guerrillas. “We were living with them with the conditions they lived in,” he said. “They went out of their way to take care of us.”
While moving from location to location, Koneman and McLachlan adjusted to the way of life of their captors. The groups holding the two students usually operated in small groups of 15 to 20 people and were able to move quickly when necessary. At a press conference in Chicago, the two students said they never stayed in a camp for longer than two months.
Their diet also adjusted to their conditions. During the ten months, many of their meals consisted of “yucca, beans, rice, tomatoes, monkey, piranha, armadillo, toucan, and a small three-foot alligator,” Koneman said.
Returning to the United States, Koneman said he anticipated some health problems from drinking Colombian water, eating the indigenous food and living in a high-risk malaria region. But after receiving a checkup last week, Koneman said he was in good condition.
The two former classmates at the Latin School of Chicago began traveling in June 1987. After completing a three-month trip through Central America, they flew to Bogota, Colombia, in early September and continued toward the border of Colombia and Peru.
The last time their parents heard directly from Koneman or McLachlan was in a letter dated Sept. 22. In the letter sent to Koneman’s brother, Koneman said the two were planning to travel down the Putumayo River.
The next time either of the students’ parents were alerted to Koneman and McLachlan’s whereabouts was in late June after being contacted by the American Embassy in Colombia. The embassy received a letter in mid-June written in Spanish and signed by Koneman and McLachlan. Dated May 25, the letter stated they were being held by the guerrillas and included a picture of the two.
The students were informed Aug. 12 by the guerrillas that they would be released. Koneman and McLachlan arrived home in Chicago six days later.
Koneman said he will not enroll at the University for the fall semester. He expects to return in the spring, and plans to take some classes at the University of Illinois-Chicago this semester.
