Now that I’ve been living in Arusha for two weeks, it’s starting to feel like a home away from home. New experiences and first impressions of wonder have become daily routines and gradual exposure to what life here is really like. It’s beginning to transition from feeling like a vacation to feeling like another place that God has given me to live. When I’m at home in America, not everything is lovely and perfect and there are plenty of hard days to face and fight through. In my very first blog post I promised to share the good and the bad here, and today I’m fulfilling my promise. Today was one of those very hard days.

This morning we thought our day was going to be wonderful. We took the day off of placement to visit the hot springs about 2 hours away from our house. We planned on spending the late morning and afternoon there, relaxing after a long week and enjoying the bliss of having nothing to do but soak up the sun and marvel at the incredibly clear water. After about an hour of paved road and an hour and a half of trekking across bumpy dirt fields, we finally arrived. It was incredibly beautiful & set the scene for a perfect day.

(Sorry for a lack of pictures… I have some beautiful ones, but I haven’t had a chance to upload them yet!)

We had only been there for 20 minutes when it happened. I saw it from the very beginning. I saw him standing on the edge of the water in his bright red shorts, and I remember wondering if he was a local or another tour guide – maybe for the older lady who had arrived shortly after us. When I first saw him, he was watching one of the girls swing into the water on a hanging rope. He looked hesitant as he stood on the shore, and I wasn’t sure why. I must have looked away or gotten distracted by the small fish biting my feet, and when I looked back in his direction he was gone. A few seconds later his hand appeared above the surface, waving and fluttering frantically. That is when my mind froze, and that is the moment I have returned to again and again, racking my brains to try to figure out why I didn’t react sooner. I saw his hand and my instincts said that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t budge from the branch where I was perched all the way across the pool. Some other part of my brain wondered if he was trying to imitate some kind of animal to scare us, like a fish or a snake. A few seconds later some of the other girls noticed the commotion too – and still I was frozen. I watched as Rachel, Elle, and Emily began to swim over and asked us if we thought he needed help or was just pulling a prank. I waited for what seemed like eternity for them to finally reach him. And then their chilling screams broke through the silence, desperate pleas for help over and over as they realized that this was no prank. This man was drowning, and we quickly became his only hope for survival.

That is when my mind & body finally seemed to wake up from the frozen fear that had overtaken me. As the girls around me started to realize what was happening I jumped off of the branch and swam to the edge of the pool, fighting my way out of the water and sprinting around to the smaller shore where the commotion had traveled to. By the time I got there Emily and Rachel were hysterical, screaming and shouting for us to go after him. He was nowhere in sight. They had pulled his unconscious body from the depths of the water in an attempt to get his head above the surface and were forced to let him go when his body weight was too much for their arms to handle anymore. There was a strong current carrying him forward, and Elle went after him as he drifted under a huge overhanging tree. We yelled to Elle to see where she was, and for a few painstakingly long moments we waited in silence. Finally, her voice came out of the brush. She was okay. The minute I heard her voice I jumped into the water to help. Once I got past the thick line of branches, I saw them. He was alert and wide-eyed with a mouth full of foam, arms wrapped tightly around the tree trunk. Elle was right behind him, using her arms to pin him to the tree and keep him out of the water. The current was stronger on this side of the springs; any farther and they both could have been whisked down the river. Elle began shouting to the other girls to form a line so that we could get him back to land. I grabbed a nearby branch to steady myself, wincing as a thorn dug its way into my forearm. His shaky hands grabbed my shoulders and he began to make his way across the stretch of water as he moved down the line. It felt like an eternity, but they finally managed to pull him out. He sat there, stunned, as several girls tried to get him to cough up the water that was surely settling into his lungs. Everything was still for a moment. Everyone was in shock.

It is Emily and Rachel who will have the biggest trauma to recover from. They were the ones to reach him first and pull his lifeless body back up to the surface. They were the ones to see him motionless, to see the threat of death get closer and closer as he lost the ability to breathe. They were the ones who were forced to let him go when their strength gave out, with no idea as to whether he would live or die.

We left the hot springs as quickly as we could. No one wanted to get into the water again. We had another scare when we realized that one of the other guides who had jumped in to try to help was still down there. Thankfully, he was able to reach the other shore and pull himself out. Haji, the man who almost drowned, was a guide for an older woman who had stopped by to see the springs. He didn’t know how to swim. The woman was furious, and she acted almost like a mom figure for us as she took control of the aftermath and made sure he knew how dangerous his situation was. She praised us all as heroes.

The emotions came in waves after we finally drove away. I am ashamed to say that some of my first thoughts were wishing that I had been one of the first girls to get to him, as if I could have made some kind of difference. I would have put myself in even more danger. All of us in that water were at risk for not making it back out, especially if he had never regained consciousness. My mind was reeling with “what if” scenes the entire journey home. It was terrifying and exhausting.

Once a few hours passed and the wave of emotions began to fade into numbness, one truth remained in my mind as my sole source of strength. I have to hold on to Jesus. I HAVE to hold on to Jesus. When the worst becomes reality and you see the threat of death up close, Jesus is the only one whose comfort and hope cannot be diminished. The looming feelings of shame and regret wanted to turn my “what if” wonderings against me so that self-blame took over. But there is no place for that, because the most important thing is that Haji is alive. It doesn’t matter how it happened or how close he was to death. He is ALIVE. And that is solely because of the saving grace of God. I don’t know why He allowed us to go through this traumatic experience, but I know it would have been much worse if he had died. God used each of us there today to save his life, and He deserves all the praise for that because we couldn’t have done it without Him. I still can’t wrap my head around how Haji went from unconscious and drowning to alert and clinging to a tree in a matter of seconds; only the work of the hand of God can explain that. I don’t for a second wish that we hadn’t gone that morning, because if we hadn’t been there that man wouldn’t be alive. Maybe he wouldn’t have jumped in at all, but if he had no one would have been there to save him. Thank goodness we were all medically trained.

As I slowly began to try to move past the events of the morning, one of my first and strongest desires that day was to be in the warm and safe embrace of home. I wanted to melt into the arms of my family and forget about everything that had happened. I wanted all of my emotions to disappear. I didn’t want to feel anything at all anymore.

As I write this now, it has been two days since the near drowning incident and each day is better than the last. Already my mind has started to blur out the trauma of that morning and allow the scene to drift into the hidden corners of my memory. Although it is difficult to recount, I am so glad that I used the car ride home from the hot springs to write down everything I could remember. At first it was just an attempt at distraction from the tears that so badly wanted to escape, but now it is the most detailed account I have of the experience. Each passing day has made it easier to see the incredible blessings in those painful moments. It is so evident that God was there, and He placed us there for a very specific reason. Despite the traumatic memory that we all walked away with, God used us to save the life of a man that He was not ready to lose yet. I have no idea if Haji knows Jesus at all, but I hope that he realizes how valuable he is. God saved him for a reason, and I hope he uses that for the glory of the kingdom.

At the end of the day, all I have is Jesus and the steady love He provides even in my darkest moments. God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.

– Allie

P.S. One of my favorite blessings of that day was getting to help wash the dishes after dinner and spend the night dancing and singing with Witness. I am so thankful for the motherly warmth and the comfort she gave me. Praise God for this incredible woman who has given me more than she will ever know.