Two English teachers rescued a drowning victim in Gi-Gu, Tainan yesterday. Unfortunately, among four male teenagers who involved in this accident, two had lost their life.
According to the local news, susan and Nicole(translated from 蘇珊與妮可) from England and Canada bravely and determinedly jumped into a very tough oceanic condition to rescue this victim when heard calling for help.
That area is famous for tough condition, especially windy and wavy.
The lucky terror-stroken survivor said, he would have died with their rescue. Two female English said it was terrifying but they just did everyone would have done when seeing people drowning. The local news praised highly the braveness of these two English teachers. I’m presonally grateful for they save of a life.
My thoughts
I am sorry to hear stroies like this again and again. Drowning has been one of the main causes of death among teenagers in Taiwan. I told my flatmate who is also an English teacher, she said right way, why Asian people don’t know how to swim? Exactly, it is in our culture which I call it aqua-phobia culture.
I remember when I was young; whenever I went to river, pond, ocean…I dared not to tell my mom, because my mom would be very worry and angry. She thinks water bodies are very dangerous. No wonder, there were more than 1000 people die from drowning each year in this little water surrounded island.
As a result of it cause, Taiwanese people or like my flatmate said, a lot of Asian people, don’t like their kids to approach any water…Thy consider water (ocean, river) to be dangerous. They don’t encourage their kids to learn how to swim, so a lot of Taiwanese adults can not swim. A lot of Taiwanese adults never receive proper swimming and self-rescued lesson when growing up. Some parents even think that if their kids are able to swim, they would go swimming, chance of drowning would be higher.
But to be close to water is human nature. Once in life time, just once is enough, that a person who doesn’t know how to swim had a chance to be in water…when slipped into deeper(over one’s head) areas or a certain wave comes…they would be in very dangerous situation.
Besides, they wear clothes on the beach, by the river, they don’t want to get tan or they don’t want to expose their bodies…then, they are putting themselves in a very tough situation cause clothing constrain a swimmer