Student Essay 18: The Desert of Death by Jinny Lee

The desert of death by Jinny Lee Hyo Jin, Grade 4, ISKL

For centuries, there has been a legend about the Desert of Death. The Desert of Death isn’t a desert. It’s a river. Then why is it called a desert? It’s a long story. My family was from Mexico. My father was half Mexican and half Aztec. He drank the cactus wine, like the Aztecs. Fresh cactuses came from the desert so we lived very near the desert. My friends, Nacho Nancy and Tortillas Tom lived near us. One day, it started to rain very hard. It didn’t stop for a long, long time.

The weather was so strange; it wasn’t like a desert at all. It was cold in the day and hot at night, and that made us really scared. We decided to gather in one house, which was owned by my family. There were dark clouds in the low sky. Raindrops shot down like arrows from the clouds. There were millions of them! We could not go out to play and it was terrible. It was raining for days. Our food was running out and so were the drinks. There were less talk and more sighs. Oh, how bored that made us! Finally, the rain stopped and it was sunny again. That was after about three weeks or so. We opened the door and we were shocked!

“Oh my god!” we gurgled. Water rushed in and drowned us in our surprise. We were in simple Mexican clothing, without any swimming apparatus. We hadn’t learned to swim so we were pushed back against the wall and we were drowning! As soon as our toes touched the ground, we felt ourselves getting smaller. It felt curious and wobbly. Then I realized that I could breathe in the water! Was it heaven or paradise? I looked at myself and saw that I had fins and gills! Oh, thank you, god, you saved me! Soon, I found the others. Life was pretty good being a fish. From that day, the desert became a huge river.

People knew us as characters of this long, interesting and unbelievable story. Twenty years later, it turned into a very famous legend. Since this water was special and death-defying, we never died. Lots of people visited us to take pictures of us and drink this death-defying water.

Soon, it became boring to live in the water – just sleeping, eating and playing. So I decided to write something. I started with simple things like, “Hello, my name is Avocado Alex. How are you?” After a week, I could write short essays. My writing grew longer and more sophisticated until I finally wrote about my life. There, you just finished reading it!