super-grace-blog2

[super-grace-blog2]

Long Walk to Water

1a. Salva seems to have a fairly good life. He has his mom, his dad, his three brothers, and his two sisters.He goes to school and seems to have a fun time where he lives. His father is a judge and his village is named after his grandfather.

1b. Nya has to walk a long way to get water, thus providing the name of the book, A Long Walk to Water. She has to walk in the heat. The jar doesn’t appear to be that heavy during the time she takes to walk to water, but I bet on the way back it is very heavy. Plus she has to walk through a ton of thorn vines, even though she tries very hard to avoid stepping on them, sometimes they get stuck in her bare feet.

1c. Salva is at school when all the sudden a battle starts outside. People are running, crying, and screaming. Some men are even holding guns. Salva really wants to go home, but he follows the instructions his teacher gave him and hides in the bush. All he wants is to go home a drink a bowl of milk.

2a. Nya stepped on a thorn that got stuck in her bare foot. She must be in a lot of pain. She used another thorn to prod the thorn out of her foot. I feel so bad for Nya, she has to walk everyday on rough, hot ground, littered with thorns.

2b. A bomb explodes near Slava, who is hiding in the bush. He runs and runs away, until he can run no more. He’s with a group of people in which a group of men separate into the what village they are from. This reminds me of how people today always separate into groups, whether it is in the school yard, at work, or at an elderly home. People will always be judgmental, it’s human nature, but human nature can always change. Also Salva can’t stop wondering if he’ll ever see his family again.

2c. The group of people arrive at a rebel base. They are sorted into two groups; one group is men and the other and the other is women, children, and elderly. Salva tries to go with the men group but he’s only eleven so he gets moved to the women, children, and elderly group. The group from Loun-Ariik, the village Salva lives in, decide to sleep in an old barn they found. Slava can’t fall asleep, something feels wrong to him. When he looks up to see if everything looks okay he sees everyone is gone. They left him.

3a. Nya assived at the watering hole as the sky went from “hazy gray to olive green”. She fills her jug and drinks until she is cool. Her foot is sore and the jug is heavy. She knows it will be a longer walk back then it was to the watering hole.

3b. Salva cries because his group from his village left him. He wonders why they left him. to be honest I wonder this exact thing; did they leave him because he’s to small or weak? Salva sees a women and it turns out she’s the one who owns the barn. The woman is a Dinka too, just like Salva. She lets him continue to sleep in the barn but Salva continues to help out with things like fetching water, to make sure she doesn’t get kicked out.

3c. After a few days of Salva staying with the Dinkan woman the dry season begins. the woman tells Salva that she has to leave and he can no longer stay with her. As he wonders what to do he sees a group of people approach the woman’s house. They are Dinkan too.

4a. Nya has to walk twice a day to the watering hole. Her mother told her to take Akeer, her younger sister, with her for the second trip. Nya thinks Akeer, who is only five, will just slow her down, but her mother insists saying that akeer needs to learn. I truly feel bad for Nya. She has to do a full day of walking just to get two jugfuls of water, everyday, seven months of the year.

4b. Salva sees no familiar faces among the newly arrived group of Dinkans.The Dinkan woman asks the group if they can take in Salva. Most of the people in the group don’t want to, but one woman in the group convinces her, what I assume to be, husband to agree to take Slava. This reminds me of a problem we have today and the solution to the problem. People always stick to one opinion they have and shut down their minds, or they go with the people they either want to be like or have some sort of influence on them. The solution is portrayed in this, too, the woman who convinces her husband figure is the one person you need to make a stand and convinces everyone else of the better move. People like this woman is all we need.

4c. Slava grows hungry, very, very hungry.The food the Dinkan woman gave him before he left with his new group ran out on the third day. Buksa, a boy/man from a village called Jur-Chol, is also very, very hungry. Buksa and Salva fell far behind the group because they are so weak from the hunger. Buksa suddenly hears something, a bird call. He follows the call and it leads him to a bee’s nest full of honey.

5a. during the dry 5 months of the year, Nya’s family moves next to a big lake. It drys up too, but the clay it sits on is still wet. Nya then has to wait for water to seep into the hole she dug. This could take hours everytime.

5b. People all throughout the group have swollen bee stings from the bees they got the honey from. Everyday the group is growing larger and larger, every morning Slava searches the crowd for his family. One day as he searches he steps on a boy’s hand. The boy’s name is Marial, Salva and him become friends ad walk everyday together.

5c. A month after Slava hid in the bush they are in the Atout people’s land. Marial and Salva continue to walk together everyday. In the Atout people’s land there are lions said to be the fiercest in all the world. Salva’s nights become uneasy, for he keeps awaking to the roar of a lion or a lion’s kills last squeal. It’s said that after the Atout people die they are reborn as these lions hungry for the flesh of humans. One day Marial and Salva are walking and Slava hears someone call his name. He is awstruck o the point to where he can’t speak. I wonder who it is? Maybe it’s his family, I hope it is.

6a. Nya likes going to the camp during the dry season because she doesn’t have to make the long trips to the watering hole everyday. She realizes this time though that her mother hates it. Her mother is scared for Nya’s father and brother, Dep, when they go out to hunt because they could be found by some Dinkan men, that might hurt them. Her mother also doesn’t like it because they can’t bring many things so they basically can only use the things near them.

6b. It turns out the man was a part of Salva’s family. It was his Uncle Jewiir. Slava had not seen his uncle in two years for he was in the military. His uncle killed a small topi with his rifle he got to keep after leaving the military. Salva ate as much as possible, as fast as possible. He, and several others, regretted it that night for their stomachs, after starving for so long, repulsed it and they spent the night vomiting.

6c. Salva still walks with Marial everyday but he makes sure to stay close to Uncle Jewiir. One day the group starts walking in the late afternoon in hopes of finding a watering hole before making a cap for the night. They don’t find one and continue to walk miles and miles, until dawn the next day, before the group leaders decide the group needs rest and can stop. Salva doesn’t wake until Uncle Jewiir shakes him and Slava hears crying near him. Something happened to someone. Uncle just said it was Salva’s friend, but that might not be Marial. I hope it’s not, and I also hope no one died.

7a. Akeer has fallen ill with an illness older children and adults recover from but continue to suffer for years. This illness to young children and elders is very dangerous. They could starve even if food is right there with them. Her sister had been complaining lots to days before but now couldn’t even talk, and could barely move. I noticed that both Nya and Salva are having a tragedy in their lives right now. I hope neither has death involved. I also learned that Nya’s father is the chief of her village.

7b. Marial has died. In the night a lion, they presume, took Marial and ate him. All they had for evidence was some blood just off the trail. Salva is tired of worrying about his family, Marial, and he is especially tired of walking. I feel so sorry for this group of people. They all have to travel miles everyday just to get away fro a war.

7c. Uncle Jewiir tells Salva they are going to cross the Nile river, go across a desert, and then go to Ethiopia. Salva wishes Marial was there so Slava could tell him that he was right. Salva grows worried when he sees no boats to cross theriver, turns out the group is gong to use papyrus and reeds to make canoes. The work is hard but it keeps his mind off of his worries.

8a. Akeer is okay. Nya’s father decided she needed a doctor so they took her to the big white tent that was like the hospital. After two doses of medicine Akeer is a skinny and weak version of her old self. The doctor says it’s the water, and they need to boil it for two hundred seconds before drinking it. Nya realizes, though, that the water comes in such little amounts it would be gone before the two hundred seconds are up.

8b. The group of canoes reaches a island in the middle where fisherman stay. The group has nothing to trade do they beg. Oddly enough Uncle Jewiir doesn’t even have to beg, they just give him food, which he then shares with Salva. Salva remembers the times he had at his home where he was never hungry. He remember sthe times his father would take his bicycle and go to the market to get rice and beans. Sometimes his father would bring back mangoes!

8c. When the night arrives the fishermen seem to all vanish into their tents. Salva finds this curious. Suddenly he doesn’t. A huge swarm of mosquitoes erupts and start biting everyone. No one in the group gets any sleep. In the morning the fishermen tells them to be cautious on the rest of their journey. Everyoe gets as much water as they can. It’s time for the hardest part of the journey, the Akobo desert.

9a. Nya’s family has been back at the village for months now, it’s even almost time to go back again. A jeep pulls up one day and two strangers get out. The men talk to the chief and some other village men.. Nya asks Dep about what the men are talking to the chief and the other men about. Dep says it’s about water, but that confuses Nya (and me too). Anyone could have told the men where the watering hole was.

9b. Salva is tortured walking in the desert. His shoes didn’t last through the first day. Uncle Jewiir tells him to drink the bare minimum of water, which is very, very hard for Savla. Breathing is hard, he’s walking on thorns, an worst of all he stubbed his toe on a rock and the whole toenail came off! Salva doesn;t realize he’s falling way behind the group until Uncle Jewiir is next to him and gets him to speed up by giving Salva a place to walk to and when he gets to that one he gives him another.

9c. On day two of walking (there will be three days total as uncle Jewiir says), Salva sees some rocks that appear to be wobbling. It could also be him that’s wobbling. It turns out it is the group. He sees nine men all collapsed on the ground. Five are dead. A women tries to use her water to wake up one man. Someone tries to tell her to stop. She doesn’t.

10a. The strangers are done talking with the chief an the other men. Nya follows them to a tree. One of the men walks halfway between the tree and another, the other walks to the other tree. The man at the halfway point speaks to the other man in a different language. When the man at the other tree translates for the chief he says, “This is the spot, halfway between the two largest tress. We will find the water here.” Nya is confused, there is no water there, unless it is raining.

10b. Salva wants to give some of his water to help the four still alive men, but Uncle Jewiir stops him. Uncle Jewiir tells Slava that others are stronger then Salva and can handle having less water better than Salva can. Almsot magically the four men are better and are soon walking with the group again. Uncle Jewiir tells Salva that once they reach the refugee camp they are going to, he is leaving and going back to Sudan to fight in the war again. Salva is sad but asks Uncle Jewiir to look for his family.

10c. Salva’s group came across some water and a dead stork to cook and eat. As the group waits hungrily for the bird to cook, some men from the Nuer tribe  attacks them. They rob them and question Uncle Jewiir. They ask Uncle Jewiir if he is with the rebels, when he says no they tie him to a tree. After they finish robbing the group they go over to Uncle Jewiir and kill him with three loud shots. I feel so bad for Salva, just in the last week he has lost his only friend and his uncle. I hope things get better for him soon. A similar thing to this happened to me recently. On the day of my ninth birthday party my father and brother went outside and saw the cat we had had for about 12 years, had died. They didn’t want to ruin my day so the net day they told me, and then got a call from our grandparents saying thy had been on a walk and found our 9 month old kitten, who had been missing for about 2 days, dead. Then last year my pet ferret that was the best pet we had ever had, died. In front of my own eyes, I saw it take it’s last breaths. Then about 2 months later our neighbor who was very important to my family and I died. This is why I really, really hope things get better for Salva, because I’ve had a similar experience to his. Twice before. 

11a. After the two men left they began clearing the area between the two trees at the fountain. It’s very dangerous for Nya’s tribe becuase poisonous snakes and scorpions are roaming about in the long grass. I feel so bad for Nya’s tribe. They have to do all this work just to get one fountain of good, clean water. Nya still makes the two daily trips to the pond. Soon she won’t have to.

11b. The group dug a grave for Uncle and to morn started walking later than usual. After they started walking again Salva had a numbness in his heart because of losing both Marial and Uncle, but soon he realizes he is actually walking faster then he was with Uncle. The pain made him stronger. The group seems to have forgotten that Uncle always shared his food with them and now Salva has to beg for food.

11c. There are thousands upon thousands of people at the refugee camp Itang. Salva makes a promise to himself that if his family is there he will find them. I’m starting to lose hope that Salva will ever find hope. All the sudden Salva is at the entrance gate, watching people arrive, he sees a bright orange head scarf, just like the one his mother wears. 

12a. The two men return to Nya’s village. But this time with ten more men, two trucks, and some new mysterious tools. ONe of the tools Nya calls “a iron giraffe”. I discover it is a drill, later in the passage it says “The giraffe was a tall drill that had been brought to the village by the two men who had visited earlier.” So yes the “iron giraffe” is a drill which I think they are going to use to dig deep down to find the water they think is deep in the ground.

12b. Salva realizes the women is not his mother. He thinks back to what Uncle had told him “’The village of Loun-Ariik was attacked... burned. Few people survived... no one knows where they are now.’” and realizes his family is dead. I feel so bad for Salva. He’s lost everything and is the last one left in his family, but I actually don’t think his family is dead. I think they might actually be alive. Suddenly while Salva felt as though he was standing on the edge of “a giant hole- a hole filled with the black despair of nothingness�� he remembers when Uncle helped him get through the desert by getting him to take baby steps. He starts telling himself “I need only to get through the rest of this day”.

12c. One day, six years later, Salva hears rumors of all the Ethiopian refugee camps being shut down. On a rainy day this actually does happen. They are ran out of the camp by armed men. Salva soon learns they are being run towards the Gilo River. It’s the rainy season which means the currents will be deadly. Plus the river is known for one more thing... Crocodiles. “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.”

13a. Nya finds the process of making the fountain funny because they keep having to drive to the pond and get water to put in the hole in order to drill. The bag kept having leaks and the crew was becoming discouraged but the boss encourages  them by telling them jokes and laughing with them. I don’t think that Nya has very much hope in the fountain. The passages from her constantly say things like “But it did not sound like water” and other things too.

13b.