Page 142 - uji coba EBook INJE tahap 2

20-m wide river at night in Tarzan-like manner! What a negligence to nullify its
possible danger! Crossing a forest river with no record of its depth, its possible
crocodiles (alligators) and its other hostile water creatures at night in the flooding
condition? Oooh my God, please save and hold us tightly!
As the Sota women in our team pushed the team to move further the men in
the team had no choice (did we?). We moved slowly, meter by meter, in the
up-to-chest floodwater. Finally we arrived to the mentioned anchoring tree beside
the river. The situation at the proximity of the river looked very different than what
had been reported. Well, it might have changed due to the abnormal condition i.e.
the rising flood and the darkness of night. And the flashlights were directed to the
said tree-stem bridge at which everybody looked. And looked! There was no tree
stem crossing the river or, otherwise, it became invisible due to the rising floodwater.
After a simple checking and the depth sounding of the ground near the anchoring
tree one was sure that the tree stem was just drowned half-meter from the water
surface but still well-tied to the anchoring tree. At this point the team was almost
divided on what to do next.
Half of the team sticked to the original plan: “move forward, walk on the tree
stem and cross the river”. The other half preferred to back off and find the dried place
and spend the night in the forest. And the bad news was the more time we took for
arguing one to another the situation got worse and worse! Not only the floodwater
got higher and higher but also the river water current became stronger and stronger.
The last-but-not-the-least problem was found by the two swimmers who had plunged
into the water and held the bridging tree-stem beam by their hands. They clung on
the beam and, as they moved towards the middle of the beam, they found out that
the tree beam had twisted to the middle. It might be broken sooner or later. Ooohhh,
our Lord Jesus, please lead and help us! Make us united and protected! Then, after
praying, ‘come on, come on, everybody move closer and let’s discuss a plan!’ And the
planned steps were implemented below. Thank God, again and again!
The first step was performing the river crossing test i.e. to cross the river by
walking on the tree-stem bridge. One of us had been chosen and the test was
successfully done, despite the near-miss accident, by Ps J. Rengkung. The good side
was the fact that some hanging roots of the inter-twined and over-arching branches
of the two anchoring trees were also inter-twined one with the other making several
cable-like parabolic sagging hanging roots from above. This ‘natural’ structure could
function as the holding bars from above so that when one walked step by step on the
tree beam one also could hold the cable-like hanging roots. The second step was 3
young guys who were good swimmers had been instructed to swim near the bridge
beam, while holding it sometimes to check its condition, and guarded the people
walking one by one on the beam. This was intended to catch any people who might