KIDS ENJOY THE KILLER RIVER

I came from a media coverage at the Western Mindanao Command last week. Actually the entire city then was experiencing a sectional rain, sounds familiar? Its like sectional power interruption which we always experienced for quite sometime. Probably I should visit Reynerio Ramos, the manager of the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative one of these days. But not for now, since I want to share another encounter.

When I left home earlier last Friday, the heat was so high, almost baked my melanin-rich skin.

But soon as we turned San Roque, the weather suddenly changed to something colder and quite cloudier. In just about 20 minutes, rain fell hard.

What surprised me, when I stepped the gate of Western Mindanao Command, again that heat hovers the sky (hmmm… probably God is quite selective now in bestowing blessings.)

After interviewing the rescued 4 Filipino fishermen from Palawan, all fellow journalists sped fast beating deadlines in time for the editors to run their stories.

I got stuck up in San Jose Gusu because of heavy traffic so I just requested the driver to drop me off near the bridge to get another vehicle bound back to Calarian.

But my attention was caught by these two boys having their dip at the murky water of San Jose Gusu River.

An old man approached me and said, “these kids are really hard headed, we’ve been telling them to get out of that river, but they ignored our advice, they knew that this river has been known here as killer river.”

Huh? Killer river?

I checked out with Francisco Barredo, the social welfare officer of the city and he confirmed that three kids have been declared dead when swollen river swallowed them up during heavy downpour that caused severe flashfloods since early this year.

Tsk!Tsk!Tsk! But it seems that children living beside the river are no longer afraid of this murky water, for them its fun to swim for free.