89 Fun Facts About A Long Walk to Water

The 'Lost Boys' label for displaced Sudanese children may derive from which classic children's story?

Peter Pan is the likely origin: aid workers in the refugee camps borrowed Barrie's name for his band of parentless boys, and Salva becomes one of them early in the novel.

Before it became a novel, Salva's story first appeared in what form, illustrated by Jim Averbeck?

A newspaper serial, drawn by Jim Averbeck, was the story's original form; Park now recommends Averbeck for classroom visits about the book because he knows Salva's story so well.

What food does an old Dinka woman give the exhausted Salva after the first group leaves him behind?

Peanuts from an old Dinka woman keep Salva going after the first group abandons him as too small to keep up; he then finds new travellers and a friend named Marial.

Salva's father needed surgery for which waterborne parasite, the news that set Salva drilling wells?

Guinea worm had infected his father after years of drinking stagnant water, and it was this news that pushed Salva to found Water for South Sudan.

The title of A Long Walk to Water recalls the autobiography of which African leader?

Nelson Mandela called his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, and Booklist's starred review suggested that teachers point out the allusion in Park's title.

Salva was resettled in which US city, now home to both Linda Sue Park and Water for South Sudan?

Rochester, New York took Salva in through a host family, and it is where he later founded Water for South Sudan and where Park, who would tell his story, lives.

What is Salva doing when gunfire breaks out at the start of A Long Walk to Water?

Sitting in class, daydreaming about the walk home, when the shooting starts; the teacher sends the boys running into the bush, away from the village, and Salva is cut off from his family.

Nya, whose village finally gets a well, belongs to which ethnic group, long at odds with Salva's Dinka?

Nuer is Nya's people, and their history of conflict with the Dinka is why she is puzzled, at the end, that a Dinka man led the crew that brought her village water.

What takes Salva's friend Marial in the night as the exhausted walkers sleep?

A lion is blamed: Salva wakes to find his only friend gone, and after this loss and another soon after, he resolves to keep walking on his own strength.

Salva spends six years in which Ethiopian refugee camp before soldiers force everyone out?

Itang held Salva from age eleven to seventeen; when Ethiopia's government fell in 1991, soldiers emptied the camp and drove its people toward a river.

Forced out of Ethiopia, Salva's group must cross which crocodile-filled river to get back into Sudan?

Gilo is the river soldiers drove the refugees into at gunpoint in the rainy season; Salva made it across, but many others were shot, drowned or taken by crocodiles.

Driven out of Ethiopia, the Lost Boys trekked to which UNHCR camp in Kenya's Turkana County?

Kakuma was so isolated that it felt to Salva like a prison, and he later moved on to a second Kenyan camp, Ifo, before his name came up for America.

In the Kenyan camps, an aid worker named Michael teaches Salva English and which sport?

Volleyball came with the lessons; Michael's English is what lets Salva cope when he is chosen for America, where he joins a local team.

Nya spends eight hours a day, seven months a year, fetching water from what kind of source?

A pond is all there is for seven months of the year; when it dries up, the family must leave home and camp beside a big lake far away.

Nya's younger sister, carried home on the walk in Park's picture book, is named what?

Akeer is the little sister whose illness from unsafe water shows why the well matters; Park's 2019 picture book Nya's Long Walk retells the day Nya carried her home.

When the well is finished, what is built beside it that leaves Nya overjoyed?

A school rises next to the well because the children no longer spend their days hauling water, the novel's closing argument that clean water buys time.

Nya thinks the drilling rig that arrives in her village looks like an iron what?

Giraffe: "iron giraffe" is how the big drill looks to Nya, and the charity behind the well now runs a fundraising contest called the Iron Giraffe Challenge.

Nya's half of A Long Walk to Water is invented; what did Park build it from?

Travellers' interviews and photos gave Park the details of Nya's village: she questioned people who had watched wells being drilled and studied their pictures and videos.

In the year A Long Walk to Water appeared, Linda Sue Park also wrote Storm Warning for which series?

The 39 Clues passes from author to author: Rick Riordan wrote the first book, and Park took the ninth.

Which relative, a former soldier with a gun, leads Salva's group until armed men shoot him dead?

His uncle Jewiir gets the boy across the desert by naming one landmark at a time, a bush, then a rock, as the only goal; he is killed before they reach the refugee camp.

A Long Walk to Water won a 2011 children's book award named for which Nobel Peace Prize-winning reformer?

Jane Addams gives her name to an award for children's books that promote peace, social justice and equality, a natural fit for a novel in which a refugee brings water to his old enemies.

What does a clinic nurse tell Nya's family to do with their drinking water?

Boil it, the nurse says, yet Nya knows the advice is almost useless: the family can gather so little water that it would boil away before anyone could drink it.

How does Salva, living in America, learn his father is alive?

An email from a cousin in Zimbabwe says his father is in a United Nations clinic, and it takes Salva months to arrange the journey to see him.

What tells Nya whether a stranger is Dinka or one of her own?

Scar patterns are how the two peoples, who look much alike, are told apart; early in the novel Salva reads an old woman's scars the same way and is relieved to find her Dinka.

On his first flight, bound for America, which drink does Salva sip that brings back a memory of home?

Coca-Cola, offered by a flight attendant, reminds him of a bottle once shared with his family; it is one small familiar thing on a journey of three planes into a land of snow.

Water for South Sudan's crews can drill only during which part of the year?

The dry season, starting each December, is when the teams work; a new well takes them only days to finish and then pumps about 1,800 gallons a day.

What do Salva's group cut and bind into boats to cross the Nile?

Reeds, cut in a hurry because no one knows how close the fighting is, are bound into small canoes that carry the whole group across the river.

Who paid for the new well in Nya's village, as the chief announces when it opens?

An American school: the chief announces that the well is named for Elm Street School, whose students raised the money that paid for the drilling.

Roughly how many boys are estimated to have fled southern Sudan on foot as the Lost Boys?

About 20,000 boys made the journey, often walking for weeks or even two years or more, many with nothing but the clothes they wore.

What animal does Salva's starving group shoot and cook, a meal so rich that it makes him sick?

An antelope: after weeks of near starvation the feast is too much for Salva, who spends the night vomiting and finds that he is far from the only one.

In the mid-1990s, which UN agency reunited about 1,200 Lost Boys with their families?

UNICEF traced the families of nearly 1,200 boys, but thousands more were left in the camps, and in 2001 close to four thousand of them came to the United States to start again.

Which desert do Salva's group cross on foot, passing men who are dying of thirst?

The Akobo takes them three days to cross; some of the walkers give their own water to strangers collapsed by the path, and Salva is amazed to see the men revive.

What keeps Salva's group awake all night on the fishermen's island in the Nile?

Mosquitoes: the island has food in plenty, but at nightfall the swarms rise and no one in Salva's group gets any sleep.

The Dinka and Nya's people both belong to which wider family of cattle-herding peoples of East Africa?

Nilotic peoples include both groups, along with the Shilluk and the Luo; kinship has not kept the peace, and the two have fought for generations over land and water.

The First Sudanese Civil War ended in 1972 with an agreement signed in which African capital?

Addis Ababa gave its name to the 1972 accord that granted the south autonomy; its breakdown in 1983, when Salva was a small boy, started the war that drove him from home.

Salva's father's parasite enters the body inside which small creatures, swallowed in unfiltered water?

Tiny crustaceans called copepods carry the larvae, which is why a simple cloth or straw filter, not medicine, is the main defence; there is no vaccine or drug.

Before A Long Walk to Water, Linda Sue Park won the 2002 Newbery Medal for which novel?

A Single Shard made Park's name, and its potter's world is typical of her books, most of which draw on her family's heritage rather than on Africa.

At Stanford, where she took her English degree, Linda Sue Park competed for the university in which sport?

Gymnastics was Park's sport at Stanford, before jobs in oil-company PR and food journalism led, at last, to her first novel in 1999.

Which of Linda Sue Park's relatives met Salva Dut before she did?

Her husband got to know Salva first; the former Lost Boy became a family friend, and Park wrote the book so that she could tell his story to many people at once.

In A Long Walk to Water, what does Nya think the tall red drilling rig in her village looks like?

An iron giraffe is how Nya sees the drill, and the name stuck: Salva's charity now runs an Iron Giraffe Challenge in which classrooms raise money for wells.

Buksa finds a beehive in A Long Walk to Water by following a bird; which bird really leads people to bees?

The honeyguide lives up to its name by leading honey hunters to wild bees' nests, then eating the wax they leave behind. Buksa's find gives the starving walkers a feast.

Which drink, handed to Salva on his first plane ride, reminds him of a treat shared with his family in Sudan?

Coca-Cola is offered by a flight attendant, and one sip carries Salva back to passing a bottle around at home. He needed three planes to reach his new American city.

In the Ethiopian refugee camp, what does Salva glimpse that makes him think he has found his mother?

An orange headscarf like the one his mother wore sends Salva hurrying through the new arrivals, but the woman is a stranger, and he has to accept that he is alone.

On the Nile island where Salva's group rests, what do the fishermen sleep under that the refugees lack?

Mosquito nets let the fishermen sleep while clouds of insects rise from the river at sunset and bite the newcomers so fiercely that nobody else gets any rest.

In A Long Walk to Water, which friend of Salva's, a boy his age, is taken by a lion as he sleeps?

Marial vanishes while the exhausted group sleeps in lion country, and Salva wakes to the news from his uncle. The two boys had bonded over missing their families.

Michael, the aid worker who teaches Salva to read English in a Kenyan refugee camp, comes from which country?

Ireland was home to Michael, who saw how badly Salva wanted to learn and taught him to read English, then came running with news that his name was on the list for America.

In A Long Walk to Water, what does a nurse tell Nya's mother to do with dirty water before drinking it?

Boil it first, says the nurse, but Nya knows the advice is nearly useless: the few cupfuls her family collects in the dry season would steam away before anyone could drink them.

In A Long Walk to Water, what lodges in Nya's heel on the way to fetch water, forcing her to stop?

A large thorn from a spiky plant sticks in Nya's heel, and with no tool to hand she digs it out using a second one before walking on.

Which language is Salva being taught in class when gunfire breaks up the lesson in A Long Walk to Water?

Arabic is only his classroom language: at home Salva speaks Dinka, and before the lesson ends his teacher is shouting for every boy to get down on the floor.

The campaign to wipe out the parasite that sickened Salva's father was led by which former US president?

Jimmy Carter took on the disease through his Carter Center in 1986, and in 1995 he even brokered a ceasefire in Sudan's civil war so that health workers could reach its villages.

Which NBA shot-blocker of the 1980s, among the league's tallest ever, came from the Dinka, the people Salva belongs to?

Manute Bol, the son of a Dinka elder, retired with more blocked shots than points and gave most of his NBA earnings to relief causes in Sudan.

Besides English, which sport does an aid worker teach Salva in the Kenyan camps, one he keeps playing in America?

Volleyball came with the reading lessons, and Salva took the game with him: settled with his American host family, he joined in again while he wrestled with a new language.

Before flying to America, Salva is trucked from his refugee camp to which capital for paperwork and new clothes?

Nairobi is where his small group is processed, and where Salva is startled to hear that it is winter in America and that he is going to be cold.

In A Long Walk to Water, what does Salva's group cut to build canoes for crossing the Nile?

River reeds are cut by the armful and built into slim canoes, a job that takes the group two days and gives the grieving Salva something to do with his hands.

In A Long Walk to Water, which fruit did Salva's father sometimes bring home as a treat for his children?

Mangoes come back to Salva as he begs for food on a river island: his favourite part was the big seed, which he would nibble and suck for hours.

Salva's father Mawien, a man with many cattle, holds which respected position in their village?

The judge of the village is Salva's father, whose big herd marks him as a success. Salva knows he is lucky to study, though he must stop each dry season when the family moves.

In A Long Walk to Water, Salva wakes alone after his village group slips away; where had they all slept?

In a barn is where the villagers leave the sleeping boy, judging that a child would slow them down. A woman living nearby then feeds him for several days.

In A Long Walk to Water, what is the name of Salva's uncle, a former soldier who leads the trek to Ethiopia?

Jewiir is the youngest brother of Salva's father, and the others accept him as leader because he carries a gun. He is killed shortly before the group reaches Ethiopia.

Southern Sudan, where A Long Walk to Water is set, became an independent country in 2011 with which capital?

Juba sits on the White Nile and became a national capital in July 2011, when South Sudan won independence after the decades of war that drove Salva from his home.

In A Long Walk to Water, what does Nya balance on her head to bring the family's water home?

A plastic container is light on the way out and punishing on the way back. Nya cushions it with a ring of cloth on her head, and with luck she is home by noon.

At the water hole in A Long Walk to Water, what does Nya dip in again and again to fill up?

A hollowed gourd serves as her dipper: she fills and pours it over and over while women, children, birds and cattle crowd around the same water.

In A Long Walk to Water, Nya eats a meal of which grain between her two daily trips for water?

Sorghum thrives where little else will grow, shrugging off heat and drought, which makes it a staple across the dry lands where Nya's family lives.

At her family's dry-season camp in A Long Walk to Water, how does Nya collect water each day?

Digging into the lakebed is slow work: Nya scoops a hole in the clay and then waits, for hours at a time, while a little water seeps in.

In A Long Walk to Water, the clinic that treats Nya's sick little sister is set up inside what?

A big white tent, days away on foot, holds the doctors and nurses who treat the girl. Her parents had hesitated, afraid the journey itself would be too much for her.

In A Long Walk to Water, where in Nya's village do the visitors choose to drill for water?

Between two big trees is the patch the men study, and Nya is baffled: she knows every corner of the village, and that ground has always been hard and bone dry.

In A Long Walk to Water, the women of Nya's village collect rocks to be pounded into what?

Gravel pounded out by hand is the village's share of the job: its women haul in the rocks while the visiting crew works the drill and Nya listens in vain for the sound of water.

In A Long Walk to Water, why does Nya frown when water first shoots up from the new borehole?

It is very muddy at first, her brother explains, because the crew has to keep drilling deeper; a few more days pass before anyone can drink from the well.

In A Long Walk to Water, what is the name of Nya's older brother, who explains the drilling crew's work to her?

Dep is among the older boys the visitors speak to first, and he later brings Nya the surprise that the man in charge of the drilling crew belongs to a rival tribe.

Leading about fifteen hundred boys through a war zone toward Kenya, when does Salva have the group walk?

Only at night was it safe to move through the fighting, so the boys slept by day and sometimes lost their way in the dark. Salva shared out every job and every scrap of food equally.

In A Long Walk to Water, which antelope does Salva's uncle shoot, a feast that leaves the starving group sick?

A topi feeds the whole group, but after weeks of near starvation their stomachs rebel: Salva is sick for hours and finds many of the others doing the same.

After the Nile, Salva's group in A Long Walk to Water must cross which desert to reach Ethiopia?

The Akobo is so barren that the island fishermen warn the walkers to carry all the water they can, and nobody in the group has a decent pair of shoes.

In A Long Walk to Water, what does Salva's uncle call him when urging him on to each landmark in the desert?

His full name, Salva Mawien Dut Ariik, spoken loud and clear, reminds the boy of the family and village he comes from, and he limps on one small goal at a time.

In A Long Walk to Water, which dead bird is Salva's group about to eat when armed robbers appear?

A stork found dead beside a pool is the first food the group has seen in two days. Before anyone can eat, six armed men order everyone to sit, and Salva's uncle is singled out.

As soldiers fire on refugees swimming out of Ethiopia, what keeps Salva from being hit in the river?

A boy pushes him under in a panicked grab, and when the grip loosens Salva surfaces to see that the boy has been shot. Being held down had kept his own head below the bullets.

After six years in the United States, Salva decides to continue his education by studying which subject?

Business was his choice, with a half-formed hope of one day finding a way to help Sudan, though the scale of his country's problems sometimes overwhelmed him.

In A Long Walk to Water, how does Salva learn in America that his father has survived the war?

A cousin's email from Zimbabwe says his father is in a UN clinic after stomach surgery. With no way to reach the clinic, Salva spends months arranging the trip.

How does Salva's father Mawien bless his long-lost son when they reunite in a clinic?

Mawien sprinkles water on his head as a blessing for one who was lost and is found; moments earlier he had doubted that the grown man in front of him could be his son.

In A Long Walk to Water, which of Salva's relatives does his father say were killed in the war?

Two of his brothers died in the fighting, but Salva's mother, his sisters and one brother were alive in the village, which was too dangerous for him to visit.

What does Salva's uncle plan to do after delivering the boy to the refugee camp in Ethiopia?

Go back to the war in Sudan is his plan, he tells his shocked nephew, who had assumed they would stay together. Asked to look for the boy's family there, he says he will.

The Ethiopian government whose 1991 collapse emptied Salva's refugee camp was led by which ruler?

Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe in May 1991 as Ethiopian rebels overthrew his regime. His fall was also a major setback for southern Sudan's rebel army.

After leaving his first Kenyan camp, Salva moves to which refugee camp near the Somali border?

Ifo, set up for Somalis fleeing their own civil war, offered Salva little food and no work. He was 22 and had spent a decade in camps before a path to America opened.

In A Long Walk to Water, Salva's group crosses the lion-haunted land of which people?

The Atuot are a real people of South Sudan's Lakes State who herd cattle much as Salva's Dinka do. It is in their lion country that his young friend disappears while the group sleeps.

Water for South Sudan runs its drilling crews from which city in the Bahr el Ghazal region?

Wau is the base for the charity's all-South Sudanese crews, who can drill only in the dry months: once the rains come, the dirt roads become impassable for their heavy rigs.

The rebel army of southern Sudan in Salva's war was led by which economist with a doctorate from Iowa?

John Garang led the rebels from 1983, signed the peace of 2005 and became Sudan's first vice-president, only to die in a helicopter crash three weeks later.

In the desert of A Long Walk to Water, which sour fruit does Salva's uncle hand him to suck on?

A tamarind has a sweet-and-sour pulp inside its pod, and sucking on it steadies Salva just after he has stubbed his toe on a rock and begun to cry.

Linda Sue Park met Salva Dut through her husband, who first got to know him while working as what?

A journalist, he got to know Salva in 2004 while covering his charity and later went to Sudan with him, a trip Park had to miss when the party was cut down for safety.

The government that southern rebels fought in A Long Walk to Water ruled Sudan from which northern capital?

Khartoum's northern elites were handed most of the power when colonial rule ended, and the resentment that caused in the south fed two civil wars.

The hand pump fitted to Water for South Sudan's wells, the most widely used in the world, is named after which country?

India lends its name to the Mark II, designed in the 1970s for villages hit by drought. Two residents of each village are trained to keep their pump working.

Apart from Salva's story, Linda Sue Park is best known for fiction drawing on the history and culture of which country?

Korea runs through her fiction, from kite fighting and silkworms to embroidery and archery; the story of a Sudanese refugee was a rare step away from her own heritage.