The long walk to water
By Ankita Ramabadran
Nya is an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small village in Southern Sudan. For seven months out of the year Nya must make two long walks every day to a pond near her village to fetch water for her family. During the dry season, Nya and her family move to a camp by a lake where Nya must dig in the clay of the lakebed with her hands and wait for hours to gather the small amount of filthy water that trickles in. One day after Nya and her family have returned to their village from the lake camp, two strangers arrive and meet with Nya’s uncle, the village chief. Soon they return with a crew of men, and begin drilling a well. Nya’s father tells her that he and the other village men will build a school and, since she no longer has to make her two long walks to fetch water each day, she will be able to go to school and learn how to read and write.
One day, a boy named Salva and the other kids at school her a gun shoot. At first, the teacher doesn’t care but then leads the boys to safety. Scared, 11 year old Salva, runs away to a place that he has never been to before. Salva could still see the war, and when one on their enemies stands in front of him, he ducks inside a bucket of water and holds his breath until they go away from him. Then he falls asleep. When he wakes up, Salva finds that he has been left behind because he is a child and will slow the group down.
Salva stays with an old woman he calls Auntie for a while until one day Auntie tells Salva that she must leave and that it will not be safe for her to travel with him. Just before Auntie leaves another small group comes by her house, and she arranges for Salva to travel with them. At first, they disagree until they finally agree. More people started to join this new group, and a few weeks later Salva is overjoyed when his Uncle Jewiir joins the group. Jewiir has been in the army and soon becomes the group’s leader. Jewiir decides to take the group to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, but to get there they must cross the Nile River and the Akobo Desert. While walking through the desert Salva starts to lose hope and begins to fall behind, but Jewiir keeps him moving by telling him to only walk to that clump of bushes, and then only walk to that rock, and so on. By teaching him to set small goals and persevere, Jewiir helps Salva get through the desert. Just before they reach Ethiopia, Jewiir is killed by looters and Salva is again alone. From then on, he had to beg for food.
Salva spends the next six years in the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia, until one day, dozens of soldiers come and force the people living in the camp into the Gilo River. Over a thousand people are killed, but Salva manages to swim across the river back into Southern Sudan.
During the next few years Salva makes this idea the focus of his life, and is eventually able to make his dream a reality.
When the well in her village is finally completed, Nya waits her turn in line and fills her plastic container with cold, clean water. She sees the man who first came to her village and talked with her uncle, and who then acted as the boss of the drilling crew. When she goes over to thank the man for bringing water to her village, he asks her name and after she tells him it is Nya, he tells her that his name is Salva.
