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The way they were treating him made Salva feel stronger still. There is no one left to help me. They think I am weak and useless. Salva lifted his head proudly. They are wrong, and I will prove it.
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 need only to get through the rest of this day, he told himself. This day and no other.
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.
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.
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.
“You learn fast, because you work so hard.”
He tried not to lose hope. At the same time, he tried not to hope too much. Sometimes he felt he was being torn in two by the hoping and the not hoping.
A step at a time. One problem at a time—just figure out this one problem.
No one was ever to be refused water.
To young people, I would like to say: Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut Rochester, New York 2010
Known as the Second Sudanese Civil War, the conflict that is depicted in this book began in 1983. Many factions were involved and numerous changes in leadership took place over the duration of the war, but in essence, the opposing sides were the Muslim-dominated government in the north and the non-Muslim coalition in the south. Besides religion, economic strife was an important factor, as the country’s reserves of oil are located in the south.
