[Carlos Gates] SUBJECT: My Wet & Wild Water Park

AUTHOR: Carlos Gates, Age 11, lives with his parents, one brother and one sister, and cousins in the village of Kaikan, Guyana, near the Venezuelan border.

DATE: November 18, 1997

[Our mud slide]
Our river mud slide
I remember some years ago my uncle took me to a water park. It cost a lot of money. We had a lot of fun, but only 1 day. Now in KAIKAN I have my own water park, and I don't have to pay 1 cent for it. It changes from week to week, so it's never boring. When the river is high, we love to jump off the top bank. Sometimes we get in a line and start jumping in 1 after another. You have to quickly move out of the way before you get sqaushed. One of my friends didn't get out of the way fast enough and the other one that jumped on him had to get stiches. Of course everyone was watching him get stitches. When the river is low, we make a wonderful waterslide from the clay bank. We have fun sliding, but some of my shorts have holes in them now. Sometimes when we want to go to the top, we don't make it because it's so slippery.

[Our mud city]
The mud city we carved out of the river bank
Another thing we do when the water is down is walk from log to log and jump into the water from the logs. We go from log to log, and then we swim to Venezuela. We named some of the logs. One of them is the Middle Log, another one is the Spider Log, and the last one is the Hidden Log. We like to dive for rocks. We get big rocks about 15" across. Sometimes we find crystals in the river. We have a canoe. Sometimes we paddle to the rapids and go down the rapids. It's fun! We like to go up to the waterfall and have a picnic.

One of the things we have most fun with is building roads and houses in the clay banks. When my friends come over, we bring down our cars, lego men, and little rubber animals we call "piggies". Sometimes the ants and the termites use our car roads. We like to watch them. As you can see, we have lots of fun at my Water Park.

By Carlos Gates

You may write to Carlos at: gates@andrews.edu

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