**(EriPlanet.Com, Monday, October 16, 2006): After a week of search for reliable information about the cause of the tragic death of Eritrea’s superb artists, Abraham Afewerki and Robel Solomon, EriPlanet.Com has finally received a credible report from one of Abraham's closest friends. Dr. Seife Berhe, an Eritrean geologist who was at the scene on the day of the accident and throughout the entire trip to Dahlak, narrates the story as follows:
Members of the mining community in Eritrea, which includes mineral exploration companies and staff from the Department of Mines of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and few close friends have an annual get together every year during the month of October. The visit is organized in order to have fun, visit the countryside, and share experiences. This visit should help us to know each other as well as to put Eritrea on the World Map.
The itinerary included traveling by a steam engine train to Massawa followed by travel using boats to Dahlak Islands, and on the way back by minibuses via Filfil, Semienawi Bahri – the only scenic forested green area in Eritrea.
This year's participants included about fifty people. On the 7th October, which was the last day before we were going to depart from the Dahlak Islands, we decided to have an hour's swim in a beach named American Beach, which is a nice sandy beach, circa four kms from the Dahlak hotel. We went by small boats to the area. Since the number of participants were many the boats had to make shuttle to the beach.
The first boat that took Abraham and Robel dropped about eight people in a near shore area and came back to fetch the second group of participants. In the meantime the first group found out that the area they were dropped was shallow and went further downstream to have a swim and in the meantime the sea level started to increase and at the same time there was sea current which was getting more treacherous.
Unfortunately the sea current scoured the sand bar in the area and Robel and Abraham found themselves dropping into deeper waters. Since they could not cope they asked for help. In the meantime many of the others in the area, did not recognize the early calls for help thinking they were in shallow waters. Eventually all the friends near by as well as others from the newly arrived boat tried their best to rescue them and pulled them up the boat. Mouth to mouth resuscitation was carried out for more than an hour, however Robel could not respond to the treatment and unfortunately passed away earlier.
Since Abraham's pulse although feeble was still alive, we took them to the clinic nearby in the Dahlak Islands and the nurses there helped but unfortunately did not have enough resources. In our desperation we asked the General of the Navy, who made available a fast boat to ferry both Abraham and Robel to Massawa Hospital. Nevertheless Abraham did not make it to the Hospital.
The big fun ended up in the loss of two of the finest musicians in the country. God bless their souls.
Seife Berhe |
