A Long Walk to Water

by Linda Sue Park

  The clangor of machinery and hammer greeted Nya each time she returned from the pond—unfamiliar noises that mingled with the voices of men shouting and women singing. It was the sound of people working hard together.

  But it did not sound at all like water.

  Itang refugee camp, Ethiopia, 1985

  "Mother! Mother, please!"

  Salva opened his mouth to call out again. But the words did not come. Instead, he closed his mouth, lowered his head, and turned away.

  The woman in the orange headscarf was not his mother. He knew this for certain, even though she was still far away and he had not seen her face.

  Uncle's words came back to him: "The village of Loun-Ariik was attacked ... burned. Few people survived ... no one knows where they are now."

  In the moment before calling out to the woman a second time, Salva realized what Uncle had truly meant—something Salva had known in his heart for a long time: His family was gone. They had been killed by bullets or bombs, starvation or sickness—it did not matter how. What mattered was that Salva was on his own now.

  He felt as though he were standing on the edge of a giant hole—a hole filled with the black despair of nothingness.

  I am alone now.

  I am all that is left of my family.

  His father, who had sent Salva to school ... brought him treats, like mangoes ... trusted him to take care of the herd.... His mother, always ready with food and milk and a soft hand to stroke Salva's head. His brothers and sisters, whom he had laughed with and played with and looked after.... He would never see them again.

  How can I go on without them?

  But how can I not go on? They would want me to survive ... to grow up and make something of my life... to honor their memories.

  What was it Uncle had said during that first terrible day in the desert? "Do you see that group of bushes? You need only to walk as far as those bushes...."

  Uncle had helped him get through the desert that way, bit by bit, one step at a time. Perhaps ... perhaps Salva could get through life at the camp in the same way.

  I need only to get through the rest of this day, he told himself.

  This day and no other.

  If someone had told Salva that he would live in the camp for six years, he would never have believed it.

  Six years later: July 1991

  "They are going to close the camp. Everyone will have to leave."

  "That's impossible. Where will we go?"

  "That's what they're saying. Not just this camp. All of them."

  The rumors skittered around the camp. Everyone was uneasy. As the days went by, the uneasiness grew into fear.

  Salva was almost seventeen years old now—a young man. He tried to learn what he could about the rumors by talking to the aid workers in the camp. They told him that the Ethiopian government was near collapse. The refugee camps were run by foreign aid groups, but it was the government that permitted them to operate. If the government fell, what would the new rulers do about the camps?

  When that question was answered, no one was ready. One rainy morning, as Salva walked toward the school tent, long lines of trucks were arriving. Masses of armed soldiers poured out of the trucks and ordered everyone to leave.

  The orders were not just to leave the camp but to leave Ethiopia.

  Immediately, there was chaos. It was as if the people ceased to be people and instead became an enormous herd of panicked, stampeding two-legged creatures.

  Salva was caught up in the surge. His feet barely touched the ground as he was swept along by the crowd of thousands of people running and screaming. The rain, which was falling in torrents, added to the uproar.

  The soldiers fired their guns into the air and chased the people away from the camp. But once they were beyond the area surrounding the camp, the soldiers continued to drive them onward, shouting and shooting.

  As he dashed ahead, Salva heard snatches of talk.

  "The river."

  "They're chasing us toward the river!"

  Salva knew which river they meant: the Gilo River, which was along the border between Ethiopia and Sudan.

  They are driving us back to Sudan, Salva thought. They will force us to cross the river....

  It was the rainy season. Swollen by the rains, the Gilo's current would be merciless.

  The Gilo was well known for something else, too.

  Crocodiles.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Southern Sudan, 2009

  Nya thought it was funny: You had to have water to find water. Water had to be flowing constantly into the borehole to keep the drill running smoothly.

  The crew drove to the pond and back several times a day. The pond water was piped into what looked like a giant plastic bag—a bag big enough to fill the entire bed of the truck.

  The bag sprang a leak. The leak had to be patched.

  The patch sprang a leak. The crew patched the patch.

  Then the bag sprang another leak. The drilling could not go on.

  The drilling crew was discouraged by the leaks. They wanted to stop working. But their boss kept them going. All the workers wore the same blue coveralls; still, Nya could tell who was the boss. He was one of the two men who had first come to the village. The other man seemed to be his main assistant.

  The boss would encourage the workers and laugh and joke with them. If that didn't work, he would talk to them earnestly and try to persuade them. And if that didn't work, he would get angry.

  He didn't get angry very often. He kept working—and kept the others working, too.

  They patched the bag again. The drilling went on.

  Ethiopia–Sudan–Kenya, 1991–92

  Hundreds of people lined the riverbank. The soldiers were forcing some of them into the water, prodding them with their rifle butts, shooting into the air.

  Other people, afraid of the soldiers and their guns, were leaping into the water on their own. They were immediately swept downstream by the powerful current.

  As Salva crouched on the bank and watched, a young man near him plunged into the water. The current carried him swiftly downstream, but he was also making a little progress across the river.

  Then Salva saw the telltale flick of a crocodile's tail as it flopped into the water near the young man. Moments later, the man's head jerked oddly—once, twice. His mouth was open. Perhaps he was screaming, but Salva could not hear him over the din of the crowd and the rain.... A moment later, the man was pulled under.

  A cloud of red stained the water.

  The rain was still pouring down—and now bullets were pouring down as well. The soldiers started shooting into the river, aiming their guns at the people who were trying to get across.

  Why? Why are they shooting at us?

  Salva had no choice. He jumped into the water and began to swim. A boy next to him grabbed him around the neck and clung to him tightly. Salva was forced under the surface without time to take more than a quick, shallow breath.

  Salva struggled—kicking, clawing. He's holding on to me too hard ... I can't ... air ... no air left...

  Suddenly, the boy's grip loosened, and Salva launched himself upward. He threw his head back and took a huge gulp of air. For a few moments he could do nothing but gasp and choke.

  When his vision cleared, he saw why the boy had let go: He was floating with his head down, blood streaming from a bullet hole in the back of his neck.

  Stunned, Salva realized that being forced under the water had probably saved his life. But there was no time to marvel over this. More crocodiles were launching themselves off the banks. The rain, the mad current, the bullets, the crocodiles, the welter of arms and legs, the screams, the blood.... He had to get across somehow.

  Salva did not know how long he was in the water.

  It felt like hours.

  It felt like years.

  When at last the tips of his toes touched mud, he forced his limbs to make swimming motions one last time. He crawled onto the river
bank and collapsed. Then he lay there in the mud, choking and sobbing for breath.

  Later, he would learn that at least a thousand people had died trying to cross the river that day, drowned or shot or attacked by crocodiles.

  How was it that he was not one of the thousand? Why was he one of the lucky ones?

  The walking began again. Walking—but to where?

  No one knew anything for sure. Where was Salva supposed to go?

  Not home. There is still war everywhere in Sudan.

  Not back to Ethiopia. The soldiers would shoot us.

  Kenya. There are supposed to be refugee camps in Kenya.

  Salva made up his mind. He would walk south, to Kenya. He did not know what he would find once he got there, but it seemed to be his best choice.

  Crowds of other boys followed him. Nobody talked about it, but by the end of the first day Salva had become the leader of a group of about fifteen hundred boys. Some were as young as five years old.

  Those smallest boys reminded Salva of his brother Kuol. But then he had an astounding thought. Kuol isn't that age anymore—he is a teenager now! Salva found that he could only think of his brothers and sisters as they were when he had last seen them, not as they would be now.

  They were traveling through a part of Sudan still plagued by war. The fighting and bombing were worst during the day, so Salva decided that the group should hide when the sun shone and do their walking at night.

  But in the darkness, it was hard to be sure they were headed in the right direction. Sometimes the boys traveled for days only to realize that they had gone in a huge circle. This happened so many times that Salva lost count. They met other groups of boys, all walking south. Every group had stories of terrible peril: boys who had been hurt or killed by bullets or bombs, attacked by wild animals, or left behind because they were too weak or sick to keep up.

  When Salva heard the stories, he thought of Marial. He felt his determination growing, as it had in the days after Uncle's death.

  I will get us safely to Kenya, he thought. No matter how hard it is.

  He organized the group, giving everyone a job: scavenge for food; collect firewood; stand guard while the group slept. Whatever food or water they found was shared equally among all of them. When the smaller boys grew too tired to walk, the older boys took turns carrying them on their backs.

  There were times when some of the boys did not want to do their share of the work. Salva would talk to them, encourage them, coax and persuade them. Once in a while he had to speak sternly, or even shout. But he tried not to do this too often.

  It was as if Salva's family were helping him, even though they were not there. He remembered how he had looked after his little brother, Kuol. But he also knew what it felt like to have to listen to the older ones, Ariik and Ring. And he could recall the gentleness of his sisters; the strength of his father; the care of his mother.

  Most of all, he remembered how Uncle had encouraged him in the desert.

  One step at a time ... one day at a time. Just today—just this day to get through...

  Salva told himself this every day. He told the boys in the group, too.

  And one day at a time, the group made its way to Kenya.

  More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely.

  It took them a year and a half.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Southern Sudan, 2009

  For three days, the air around Nya's home was filled with the sound of the drill. On the third afternoon, Nya joined the other children gathered around the drill site. The grownups rose from their work pounding rocks and drifted over, too.

  The workers seemed excited. They were moving quickly as their leader called out orders. Then—

  WHOOSH!

  A spray of water shot high into the air!

  This wasn't the water that the workers had been piping into the borehole. This was new water—water that was coming out of the hole!

  Everyone cheered at the sight of the water. They all laughed at the sight of the two workers who had been operating the drill. They were drenched, their clothes completely soaked through.

  A woman in the crowd began singing a song of celebration. Nya clapped her hands along with all the other children. But as Nya watched the water spraying out of the borehole, she frowned.

  The water wasn't clear. It was brown and heavy-looking.

  It was full of mud.

  Ifo refugee camp, Kenya, 1992–96

  Salva was now twenty-two years old. For the past five years he had been living in refugee camps in northern Kenya: first at the Kakuma camp, then at Ifo.

  Kakuma had been a dreadful place, isolated in the middle of a dry, windy desert. Tall fences of barbed wire enclosed the camp; you weren't allowed to leave unless you were leaving for good. It felt almost like a prison.

  Seventy thousand people lived at Kakuma. Some said it was more, eighty or ninety thousand. There were families who had managed to escape together, but again, as in Ethiopia, most of the refugees were orphaned boys and young men.

  The local people who lived in the area did not like having the refugee camp nearby. They would often sneak in and steal from the refugees. Sometimes fights broke out, and people were hurt or killed.

  After two years of misery at Kakuma, Salva decided to leave the camp. He had heard of another refugee camp, far to the south and west, where he hoped things would be better.

  Once again, Salva and a few other young men walked for months. But when they reached the camp at Ifo, they found that things were no different than at Kakuma. Everyone was always hungry, and there was never enough food. Many were sick or had gotten injured during their long, terrible journeys to reach the camp; the few medical volunteers could not care for everyone who needed help. Salva felt fortunate that at least he was in good health.

  He wanted desperately to work—to make a little money that he could use to buy extra food. He even dreamed of saving some money so that one day he could leave the camp and continue his education somehow.

  But there was no work. There was nothing to do but wait—wait for the next meal, for news of the world outside the camp. The days were long and empty. They stretched into weeks, then months, then years.

  It was hard to keep hope alive when there was so little to feed it.

  Michael was an aid worker from a country called Ireland. Salva had met a lot of aid workers. They came and went, staying at the camp for several weeks or, at most, a few months. The aid workers came from many different countries, but they usually spoke English to each other. Few of the refugees spoke English, so communication with the aid workers was often difficult.

  But after so many years in the camps, Salva could understand a little English. He even tried to speak it once in a while, and Michael almost always seemed to understand what Salva was trying to say.

  One day after the morning meal, Michael spoke to Salva. "You seem interested in learning English," he said. "How'd you like to learn to read?"

  The lessons began that very day. Michael wrote down three letters on a small scrap of paper.

  "A, B, C" he said, handing the scrap to Salva.

  "A, B, C" Salva repeated.

  The whole rest of the day, Salva went around saying, "A, B, C," mostly to himself but sometimes aloud, in a quiet voice. He looked at the paper a hundred times and practiced drawing the letters in the dirt with a stick, over and over again.

  Salva remembered learning to read Arabic when he was young. The Arabic alphabet had twenty-eight letters; the English, only twenty-six. In English, the letters stayed separate from each other, so it was easy to tell them apart. In Arabic words, the letters were always joined, and a letter might look different depending on what came before or after it.

  "Sure, you're doing lovely"' Michael said the day Salva learned to write his own name. "You learn fast, because you work so hard."

  Salva did not say what he was thinking: that he was working hard because he wanted to learn to read English before Michael lef
t the camp. Salva did not know if any of the other aid workers would take the time to teach him.

  "But once in a while it's good to take a break from work. Let's do something a wee bit different for a change. I'm thinking you'll be good at this—you're a tall lad."

  So Salva learned two things from Michael: how to read and how to play volleyball.

  A rumor was spreading through the camp. It began as a whisper, but soon Salva felt as if it were a roar in his ears. He could think of nothing else.

  America.

  The United States.

  The rumor was that about three thousand boys and young men from the refugee camps would be chosen to go live in America!

  Salva could not believe it. How could it be true? How would they get there? Where would they live? Surely it was impossible....

  But as the days went by, the aid workers confirmed the news.

  It was all anyone could talk about.

  "They only want healthy people. If you are sick, you won't be chosen."

  "They won't take you if you have ever been a soldier with the rebels."

  "Only orphans are being chosen. If you have any family left, you have to stay here."

  Weeks passed, then months. One day a notice was posted at the camp's administration tent. It was a list of names. If your name was on the list, it meant that you had made it to the next step: the interview. After the interview, you might go to America.

  Salva's name was not on the list.

  Nor was it on the next list, or the one after that.

  Many of the boys being chosen were younger than Salva. Perhaps America doesn't want anyone too old, he thought.

  Each time a list was posted, Salva's heart would pound as he read the names. He tried not to lose hope. At the same time, he tried not to hope too much.