A story from Kuenselonline: If only …

Date: Thursday, July 30 @ 01:04:24 EDT Topic: home “It still feels like a nightmare and that I’ll wake up to find everything well in place” Wangchu incident30 July, 2009 - “Study as if you were to live forever, live as if you were to die tomorrow,” reads the quote, stuck on the bedroom door of 14-year-old Sangay Phuntsho. Inside the small bedroom, there is a table with a stack of books and a white table fan. A clean school gho and a pair of white lageys are neatly folded on the bed, ready to be worn the next day. “Had he been alive, the room would have been much tidier. He was particular about being tidy,” says Sonam’s sister, Yeshi Lhamo, 27, as she looks around the room. “I never imagined he’d die such a death. I raised him like my own child. It still feels like I’ll wake up to find everything well in place,” says Yeshi, the eldest of six siblings. Yeshi has almost given up on catching a last glimpse of her brother’s body. “I don’t think they’ll be able to find it. I wasn’t there when the incident occurred, I’d have died from the pain, seeing him in that kind of a situation.” Sangay Phuntsho was one of the boys, washed away by the Wangchu in Tsimalakha on July 27. It’s been three days since the tragedy and a somber atmosphere clouds Tsimalakha, as friends and neighbours still talk about the incident. All the families have already started performing last rites. Rinzin Dema, 33, who moved to Paro three months ago, did not meet her son Sangay Dawa, 13, but he died. She had kept him with his best friend, the lone survivor, so that he could continue the academic session in Tsimalakha and join her by year-end. “Whenever I see a boy of his age, it reminds me of him. It feels like darkness, I can’t even think properly,” she says sobbing. “I wish I could at least get to see the body.” Sangay Pem, 37, was with the rescue team when the Wangchu took her son, 14–year-old Kinley Rinzin. “I passed my phone after putting it in a polythene bag and tied it to the nylon rope which had reached the children. I kept on shouting, telling them not to panic,” she says, trying to keep herself calm and firm, her other four children sit quietly in the room. “I feel so helpless. It was like going there and helping him take his last breath.” That morning when Kinley Rinzin, 14, told her that he wanted to go for a scout campaign in school, he didn’t even perform the household chores she had asked him to, like he normally did. “He was so restless and kept answering back to me. He just set the rice in the cooker and left with his packed lunch,” said Sangay, holding back tears. All the eight boys of Tsimalakha lower secondary school, who set out for the Wangchu (river) with their lunch boxes on July 26, had lied to their parents, saying that they were going to school. The parents frantically searched for them in and around Tsimalakha, when they didn’t come home by nightfall. Of the eight boys, three were from divorced families and four were staying with their families, employees of the Chukha hydropower corporation. The rest were staying with relatives. Tshewang Tenzin, assistant engineer of Chukha dzongkhag, said that he told his son, Tashi Phuntsho, 14, not to go to school that day, but he left with some snacks. “I know what it feels to watch your child die right in front of you,” said Tshewang, who was there that fateful night. He had spoken to his son one last time on the mobile phone that was passed to them. “It was like killing them ourselves.” By Kinga Dema The URL for this story is: http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13097