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The humidity was oppressive. I wiped my brow for what felt like the hundredth time that day, relieved that we were heading back down to the river and away from the stifling heat in the trees. Despite my obvious lack of heat tolerance, I was in good spirits; I’d seen orangutans. I still had a small bubble of excitement in my stomach as I remembered the young male which had swung into the trees above us, watching us with curious eyes while we ate lunch. I smiled to myself with the memory. My guide stopped near the bottom of the stairs and I looked up to see what he had noticed. 5 minutes before, laughter and joyous screaming could be heard from across the river as the younger children played in the water. Now there was shouting. A crowd was beginning to form and younger children on the riverbanks were pointing to the water. An older boy ran forward and jumped into the fast-flowing river, diving down. He resurfaced before diving down once again. Empty rubber rings were bobbing at the side of the bank. He dove a third time. When he resurfaced, he was bracing a young boy of no more than ten years old, his body limp. We were not even fifty metres away, but with no way to cross the fast-flowing river that separated us, there was nothing to do but watch. A larger crowd had gathered on the bank. Two older boys came forward to help drag the young boy onto the bank. They began discussing something and pointing at the child. I turned to my guide ‘why is nobody helping? They need to do CPR’. He just looked at me as I mimed the chest compressions, hoping those over the river would see, as he said ‘they don’t know how’. As I watched on, the two older boys picked up the young boy’s legs, holding him upside down and began to shake him vigorously. I couldn’t stand to look away, despite knowing that I was watching a child die. A short time later they laid him down. A few seconds after that we saw movement at the back of the crowd as a woman burst forward and let out a shrill cry, one that could only belong to a mother who has realised she’s seen her child alive for the last time. It was then that I turned away, as my guide said ‘It happens a lot. The boys are not good swimmers but they like to jump in and play on rafts and rubber rings but they get caught in the strong undercurrents.’ I only turned back around once, to see the crowd dispersing: children returning to grab their rubber rings, adults wandering back to their homes and shops. Life was returning to normal. It had not even been 10 minutes.