When the shooting stops, he urges the boys to run into the bush so that they will not be conscripted into the fighting between the rebels and the soldiers in the Sudanese civil war. Suddenly, his thoughts are interrupted by the patter of gunfire and the teacher shouts for all the boys to get down. Salva’s story starts with him being in school, daydreaming about the walk home. Nya walks over to the man who helped bring the well about and thanks him. Nya is also excited to learn that there is going to be a school built, and since she does not have to fetch water anymore, she can go to school. One at a time, people bring their bottles to taste the clear water. The drilling process is arduous, and one of the men who is clearly the leader has to coax and encourage the workers.įinally, the well yields fresh water and the entire village celebrates. When Nya learns there is going to be a well built, she is skeptical. They talk with the elders and construction begins in the ground between two big trees. She worries about her sister, Akeer, who is sick from the poor water, but there is little that can be done. She wishes she could go to school but that is only for boys. Her responsibility is to walk to the pond twice a day every day to fetch water for her family it is a long, hot walk, but water is scarce in the region. In Nya’s story, she is of the Nuer tribe. Park weaves two stories together: that of Nya, a young girl from Sudan in 2008-09, and that of Salva, a Sudanese boy whose story begins in the 1980s and continues into the 2000s.
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