My Near Death Experiences - (SWC)

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It was a hot summer day and a perfect day to go swimming. The river was flowing calmly to the south and the currents were just strong enough to make me drift along without any efforts. Little did I know that I was about to experience the worst nightmare of my life.

We all go through life, day after day, without thinking much about our purpose. We take life for granted and we think we deserve to be alive until such a moment when we come so close to death and we are suddenly jolted to a realization. Only then do we start to appreciate every single moment of our lives. Well, at least most of us.Perhaps many of you have not experienced any near-death moments and you don't really value your lives, but I hope this story will make you aware of how precious life is and how easily it can be taken away.

I have had at least 3 incidents where I came so close to death and I am wondering if I'm like a cat and I have nine lives. If That's the case, then I have six lives remaining. On a serious note though, I believe I have cheated death 3 times (if there is something called cheating death). I will share one of my experiences with you and I hope it will help you to be thankful for every breath you take. Life is precious and we should really appreciate every single moment that we spend on this earth. When we die, what's left behind are just memories and they too will fade away with time.

My first kiss with death

It was a summer afternoon of 2000 and my dad had just acquired a new farm. Since cash was hard to come by, we didn't have enough to hire proper farming equipment to develop the largely undeveloped land to prepare it for growing crops. I was only 15 at the time, I knew very little about farming and my dad didn't know much either. All I know is that we were a family and we had a piece of land which we could develop and earn a decent income from the farm produce. Running through our property, was a medium-sized river and with the right fittings and material, this was going to be our source of water for many things especially irrigation.

It was school holidays and my dad decided this was the perfect time for us to start developing the land since we didn't have school obligations. There was a small cottage which had been built by the previous owner and of course there was no electricity, but there was clean drinking water nearby. Every single morning, me, my dad and my 2 little brothers set out to manually cut down trees around the area where our house was going to be built. We made a small garden and we planted some corn and string beans.

The drowning

One fateful day, we woke up and did our usual work and when it was too hot to work, we went back to the cottage to have lunch. After lunch, me and my little brothers decided to go for a swim. I don't know if you have ever taken a swim in a river before, but this particular river was home to many creatures and the most dangerous was the Hippopotamus. The Hippo is mostly harmless, but when provoked, it can kill a human being. We made sure to be as far away as possible from where the hippos were frequently spotted.

I will tell you one thing, neither me, nor my two little brothers could swim, but we were able to play in shallow waters safely. The area which we chose was mostly shallow and I could stand on my feet and my head would be above the water. We certainly thought we were not in danger at all. As I have mentioned, the water was flowing calmly but the currents were strong enough to push us down the river. Since I could not swim, I pretended to swim in the direction of the current. Making all the moves that swimmers make, but the current was the one responsible for my tiny movement along the river. I would then stand on my feet and walk against the current back to my starting point since I could obviously not swim against the current. I repeated this dozens of times and it was really fun. My brothers were probably doing the same, but I couldn't care less. I was too busy having fun to watch what they were doing.

Fun moments

I challenged myself to go longer with each lap and I closed my eyes since the water was not very clean and I didn't have swimming goggles and I couldn't take a breathe during the entire lap because I didn't have the skills to breath while swimming.
This moment I obviously went much longer than all my previous attempts because when I tried to stand and walk back, I couldn't reach the surface of the water to breath. Suddenly I realized what was going on. I had drifted too far to a very deep part of the river. I jumped up and took a gulp of air and some water managed to make it's way to my lungs. I tried again and this time I managed to scream for help. My brothers didn't even care, I guess they were too busy having fun to notice that I was drowning. I later found out that they thought I was just fooling around.

Image source (Unsplash)

I kept jumping up and screaming "HELP!", but my shouts seemed to fall on deaf ears. Suddenly I could not reach the surface no matter how high I jumped. I was panicking and my lungs were filling up with water with each attempt to breath. They were screaming for air, but despite my numerous attempts, I could no longer reach the surface. It suddenly dawned on me that I was going to die. I realized that my attempts to get to the surface were fruitless and so I gave up. I was just waiting for my body to become unconscious because there was no more hope for me.

The touch of an angel.

Image Source(Pexels)

My body was almost lifeless now and it was drifting along the river and no one could help me. I had given up on ever seeing my family again. I could no longer touch the ground with my feet because the river kept getting deeper. Suddenly I felt my feet touch the riverbed. I just managed to summon my last strength to stand on my feet and voila my head was above the surface of the water. I took a gasp of air and I managed to look around me long enough to realize that I was approaching the corner of the river. I was in a desperate situation and I no longer had any strength left in me to swim but I was able to think straight, something that rarely happens to anyone in that situation. In that few seconds that my head was above the water, I was able to calculate that if I let the water push me, it will inevitably push me to the bank of the river since I was approaching a bend.

Divine Grace

It so happened that there was a mound of sand at that particular spot and that mound saved my life. I can't tell if it has always been there or some divine intervention took place as God had designed that I should live longer than just 15 years. Although the water became deep again just after I passed that mound, I now had hope and I had to stay alive till I reached the riverbed. Sure enough in seconds I was pushed to the edge and I grabbed the reeds and I hoisted myself out of the water and coughed out the gallons of water I had taken into my lungs.

I told my brothers not to utter a word to my dad about the incident. I never shared this story with anyone until I was an adult, but it has remained in my memory forever. I will never forget it and the memories are as vivid in my head as if it happened yesterday. I have had a couple more near death experiences but I will probably share those stories at another stage. That day I could have lost my life, I could have passed on to another world. But God saw it fit to give me another chance. I sometimes wish I had died, when life gets really rough, I wish I had not made it that day and I would have been spared some of life's miseries. But when I see the lives I have made a positive impact on, I realize that I have a purpose on this universe and until that purpose is fulfilled, I will continue to live and do my best no matter how hard life can get.

I really hope you enjoyed reading my story and I hope it touched you in some way. Thank you for taking your precious time to read it.

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