A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

by Linda Sue Park

Salva spoke the language of his Dinka tribe at home. But in school he learned Arabic,

The fighting was scattered all around southern Sudan, and now the war had come to where Salva lived.

“Loun-Ariik! The village of Loun-Ariik, here!”

He was Salva Mawien Dut Ariik, from the village named for his grandfather.

The ritual scar patterns on her forehead were familiar: They were Dinka patterns, which meant that she was from the same tribe as Salva.

He was glad that she was not Nuer. The Nuer and the Dinka had a long history of trouble. No one, it seemed, was sure where Nuer land ended and Dinka land began, so each tribe tried to lay claim to the areas richest in water.

The Dinka and the Nuer had been fighting each other for hundreds of years.

To the pond and back—to the pond and back—nearly a full day of walking altogether. This was Nya’s daily routine seven months of the year. Daily. Every single day.

Nya’s family did not live by the lake all year round because of the fighting. Her tribe, the Nuer, often fought with the rival Dinka tribe over the land surrounding the lake.

Nya would crouch by the hole, waiting. Waiting for water. Here, for hours at a time. And every day for five long months, until the rains came and she and her family could return home.

Their eyes met. “I’m Salva.” “I’m Marial.” It was good to make a friend.

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.

website waterforsouthsudan.org