| Sports |
When the river floods
By PETER KORUGL
The Burum and Kuat
people have always walked to Lae city and back
A complete journey, carrying cargo enough for two or three men,
these mountain men and women do it in four days, braving storms
and floods that hit them, time and time again.
The first leg of their journey starts at Voco Point in Lae. They
head east on dinghies to Bukawa, a two-hour trip.
From there, they unload their cargo, strap them on their backs
and start the second leg of their journey, the walk up the
Buhemg River, a journey that will take two days.
Tus Yotong and Boti Gerriong have made this journey countless
times.
On Friday, August 17 they began this journey home from Voco
Point in a dinghy full of passengers. With them was a 12 year
old relative
A second dingy, fully loaded, went with them and when they
arrived at Bukawa, they found a group waiting.
The three parties set out. Overhead rain clouds were forming but
that was not unusual for it had been raining heavily lately.
Tus, Boti and their young relative headed for Speckeng, where
they would rest the night and continue their walk home the next
day.
However the men fell behind because of the weight they carried,
so they told the young man to walk ahead with the other groups
and bring help.
"I wanted us to sleep at Buim but Boti wanted us to find rest at
Speckeng. He was also thinking of the young man who went ahead
so we kept walking," Tus said.
"We arrived at Speckeng in the night but could not get into the
village. We had crossed three tributaries and tried the other
two but found the current too strong.
"We decided to wait out the night and try in the morning. It did
not sink in us that we were stranded on a big sand bed in the
middle of the river and in the path of the flood.
"By touch light, we made our way to the highest point. There
were trees so we set up camp".
"It must be around midnight. The roar of the water woke us up.
By the lights from our torches, we saw that the water level was
rising fast.
"We tied our bags to the trees and waited, Moti facing north and
I facing south, for day to break.
"I was startled when I heard him gasp and pray, "Oh God, please
don't let the water kill us!'"
"I turned around and saw what frightened him. There was this
huge wall of muddy water, six to seven meters high moving at
high speed down on us. That water was not small.
"'Oh God, don't let us die,' I uttered before the water hit us,"
he said.
Tus and Boti were separated there. The floodwaters picked up Tus
and carried him. He saw a tree bearing down on him and clung to
one of the branches, rolling with it down the swirling water.
On the way, he was torn off the branch by the floodwaters and
thrown against another tree, which he clung to.
"I hit rocks and other fast moving objects on the way. After
some hours, I felt the stones at my feet. I tried to stand up
but I was weak.
"I dragged myself onto dry land where I collapsed. When I woke
up, I saw that the flood was building up. The flood would get me
again if I did not move.
"It was Saturday morning and I must have been in the water for
some 6 hours.
Tus looked everywhere for Boti.
"I stayed all day on that island. The floodwaters divided into
five tributaries, three on one side and two on the other. I was
occupying one of the sand banks in the middle".
He slept that night on the island. The next morning he saw a
young man on the banks.
"I waved and waved and finally I got his attention. I signaled
with my hands that I needed a smoke badly.
"He left for his village but did not return. Some time later a
small boy came and I tried to talk to him but he fled in fright.
I realized I presented a frightening sight to the young man
because I was covered in sand. He fled home and told the
villagers about me".
Amu Giong from Speckeng village organized a rescue party who
went out and saved Tus.
Tus told Amu about Boti.
"He was buried in the sand. He was on his hands and knees when
the sand covered him," Tus said.
"He was very weak and was trying to crawl out. He did not make
it. He was swallowed up by the sand," a tearful Tus told family
members after arriving at Voco Point in Lae from his ordeal in
the floodwaters.
Boti, a father of a girl, was the forth person to be taken by
the Buhemg River.
"Each year, we loose up to six people. These are lives that are
unnecessarily ended like this," Kevin Kevengu of Burum/Kuat.
It cost over K500 for a round trip on small aircrafts, an
impossible amount for this mountain people, who grow some of the
best organic coffee in the world, to raise.
Not many people survive a flooded Buhemg and live to tell the
tale later. Yus Yotong is lucky he did.
 
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