# A Long Walk to Water

A Long Walk to Water (2010) by Linda Sue Park is a short novel. It blends the true story of Salva Dut whose story is based in 1985, a part of the Dinka tribe and a Sudanese Lost Boy, and the fictional story of Nya whose story is based in 2008, a young village girl that was a part of the Nuer tribe. Park used this book as a platform to support Dut's organization, Water for South Sudan.

## Quotes

* One step at a time, one day at a time, just today, just this day to get through.
* Reading for writers is like training for athletes.
* If he were older and stronger, would he have given water to those men? Or would he, like most of the group, have kept his water for himself?
* He was floating with his head down, blood streaming from a bullet hole in the back of his neck
* Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut
* How could memories feel so close and so far away at the same time?
* More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half.
* Salva shouldered his way through the crowd until he was standing in front of the list. He raised his head slowly and began reading through the names. There it was. Salva Dut—Rochester, New York. Salva was going to New York. He was going to America!
* Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting
* Her sickness came from the water,” the nurse explained. “She should drink only good clean water. If the water is dirty, you should boil it for a count of two hundred before she drinks
* 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.
* They patched the bag again. The drilling went on
* 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
* 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.
* 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
* And she found her voice. "Thank you," she said, and looked up at him bravely. "Thank you for bringing the water.
* know much about him, except that his name was Buksa. As they walked along, Buksa slowed down. Salva wondered sluggishly if they shouldn’t try to keep up a bit better. Just then Buksa stopped walking. Salva stopped, too. But he was too weak and hungry to ask why they were standing still. Buksa cocked his head and furrowed his brow, listening. They stood motionless for several moments. Salva could hear the noise of the rest of the group ahead of them, a few faint voices, birds calling somewhere in the trees. . . . He strained his ears. What was it? Jet planes? Bombs? Was the gunfire getting closer, instead of farther away? Salva’s fear began to grow until it was even stronger than his hunger. Then— “Ah.” A slow smile spread over Buksa’s face. “There. You hear?” Salva frowned and shook his head
* There was a big lake three days’ walk from Nya’s village. Every year when the rains stopped and the pond near the village dried up, Nya’s family moved from their home to a camp near the big lake. 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. Men and boys were hurt and even killed when the two groups clashed. So Nya and the rest of her village lived at the lake only during the five months of the dry season, when both tribes were so busy struggling for survival that the fighting occurred far less often.
* Yes, there it is again. Come!” Buksa began walking very quickly. Salva struggled to keep up. Twice Buksa paused to listen, then kept going even faster. “What—” Salva started to ask. Buksa stopped abruptly in front of a very large tree. “Yes!” he said. “Now go call the others!” By now Salva had caught the feeling of excitement. “But what shall I tell them?” “The bird. The one I was listening to. He led me right here.” Buksa’s smile was even bigger now. “You see that?” He pointed up at the branches of the tree. “Beehive. A fine, large one.” Salva hurried off to call the rest of the group. He had heard of this, that the Jur-chol could follow the call of the bird called the honey guide! But he had never seen it done before. Honey! This night, they would feast
* stands of stunted trees. There was little to eat: a few fruits here and there, always either unripe or worm-rotten. Salva’s peanuts were gone by the end of the third day. After about a week, they were joined by more people—another group of Dinka and several members of a tribe called the Jur-chol. Men and women, boys and girls, old and young, walking, walking. . . . Walking to nowhere. Salva had never been so hungry. He stumbled along, somehow moving one foot ahead of the other, not noticing the ground he walked on or the forest around him or the light in the sky. Nothing was real except his hunger, once a hollow in his stomach but now a deep buzzing pain in every part of him. Usually he walked among the Dinka, but today, shuffling along in a daze, he found he had fallen a little behind. Walking next to him was a young man from the Jur-chol. Salva didn’t
* The first day in the desert felt like the longest day Salva had ever lived through. The sun was relentless and eternal: …show more content. Even breathing became an effort: Every breath Salva took seemed to drain strength rather than restore it”
** (Park 52)
* my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?”
** (Wallace 4-5).

## External links

* A Long walk to water
* bartleby
* goodreads