Chapter 10↵
The men finished their meeting. They all stood and walked past Nya's house. Nya joined the crowd of children following them.↵
A few minutes' walk beyond her house, there was a tree. The men stopped at the tree, and the strangers talked to Nya's uncle some more.↵
There was another tree some fifty paces past the first one. With Nya's uncle beside him, one of the men stopped at the halfway point. The other man walked the rest of the way and examined the second tree.↵
"This is the spot, halfway between the two largest trees. We will find the water here."↵
Nya shook her head. What were they talking about? She knew that place like the back of her own hand. It was there, between the two trees, that the village sometimes gathered to sing and talk around a big fire. There wasn't a single drop of water on that spot, unless it was raining!

(Chapter 12)↵
An iron giraffe. A red giraffe that made very loud noises.↵
The giraffe was a tall drill that had been brought to the village by the two men who had visited earlier. They had returned with a crew of ten more men and two trucks—one hauling the giraffe-drill along with other mysterious equipment, and the other loaded with plastic pipe. Meanwhile, the land was still being cleared.↵
Nya's mother tied the baby on her back and walked with several other women to a place between the village and the pond. They collected piles of rocks and stones and tied them up into bundles using sturdy cloth. They balanced the bundles on their heads, walked back to the drilling site, and emptied the rocks onto the ground.↵
Other villagers, using tools borrowed from the visitors, pounded the rocks to break them up into gravel. Many loads of gravel would be needed. Nya didn't know why. The piles of gravel grew larger each day.

Southern Sudan, 1985↵
No one in the group had eaten anything for two days. Their water was nearly gone. Only the vision of leaving the desert kept them moving through the heat and the dust.↵
Early that afternoon, they came across the first evidence that the desert was receding: a few stunted trees near a shallow pool of muddy water. The water was unfit to drink, but a dead stork lay by the pond's edge. Immediately, the group began to make preparations to cook and eat the bird. Salva helped gather twigs for the fire.↵
As the bird roasted, Salva could hardly keep his eyes off it. There would only be enough for a bite or two for each person, but he could hardly wait.↵
Then he heard loud voices. Along with the rest of the group, he turned and saw six men coming toward them.↵
As the men approached, he could see that they were armed with guns and machetes.↵
The men began shouting. "Sit down!" "Hands on your heads!" "All of you! Now!"↵
Everyone in the group sat down at once. Salva was afraid of the weapons, and he could see that the others were, too.↵
One of the men walked among the group and stopped in front of Uncle. Salva could tell by the ritual scarring on the man's face that he was from the Nuer tribe.↵
"Are you with the rebels?" the man asked. "No" Uncle answered.↵
"Where have you come from? Where are you going?" "We come from the west of the Nile" Uncle said. "We are going to Itang, to the refugee camp."↵
The man told Uncle to get up and leave his gun where it was. Two of the other men took Uncle to a tree several yards away and tied him to it.↵
Then the men moved among the group. If anyone was carrying a bag, the men opened it and took whatever was in it. They ordered some people to remove their clothing and took that, too.↵
Salva was trembling. Even in the midst of his fear, he realized that for the first time on the trip, it was a good thing to be the youngest and smallest: The men would not be interested in his clothes.↵
When the men had finished their looting, they picked up Uncle's gun. Then they walked to the tree where Uncle was tied up.↵
Maybe they will leave us alone now that they have robbed us, Salva thought.↵
He heard them laughing as Salva watched, one of the men aimed his gun at Uncle.↵
Three shots rang out. Then the men ran away.

Chapter 11↵
They buried Uncle in a hole about two feet deep, a hole that had already been made by some kind of animal. Out of respect for him, the group walked no more that day but took time to mourn the man who had been their leader.↵
Salva was too numb to think, and when thoughts did come to him, they seemed silly. He was annoyed that they would not be able to eat after all: While the men had been looting the group, more birds had arrived and pecked at the roasted stork until it was nothing but bones.↵
The time for grief was short, and the walking began again soon after dark. Despite the numbness in his heart, Salva was amazed to find himself walking faster and more boldly than he had before.↵
Marial was gone. Uncle was gone, too, murdered by those Nuer men right before Salva's eyes. Marial and Uncle were no longer by his side, and they never would be again, but Salva knew that both of them would have wanted him to survive, to finish the trip and reach the Itang refugee camp safely. It was almost as if they had left their strength with him, to help him on his journey.

The refugee camp at Itang was filled with people of all ages-men, women, girls, small children... But most of the refugees were boys and young men who had run away from their villages when the war came. They had run because they were in double danger: from the war itself and from the armies on both sides. Young men and sometimes even boys were often forced to join the fighting, which was why their families and communities-including Salvas schoolmaster-had sent the boys running into the bush at the first sign of fighting.↵
Children who arrived at the refugee camp without their families were grouped together, so Salva was separated at once from the people he had traveled with. Even though they had not been kind to him, at least he had known them. Now, among strangers once again, he felt uncertain and maybe even afraid.↵
As he walked through the camp with several other boys, Salva glanced at every face he passed. Uncle had said that no one knew where his family was for certain ... so wasn't there at least a chance that they might be here in the camp?↵
Salva looked around at the masses of people stretched out as far as he could see. He felt his heart sink a little, but he clenched his hands into fists and made himself a promise.↵
'If they are here, I will find them.'

During the afternoon of the second day, Salva picked his way slowly through the crowds. Eventually, he found himself standing near the gate that was the main entrance to the camp, watching the new arrivals enter. It did not seem as if the camp could possibly hold any more, but still they kept coming: long lines of people, some emaciated, some hurt or sick, all exhausted.↵
As Salva scanned the faces, a flash of orange caught his eye.↵
Orange... an orange headscarf...↵
He began pushing and stumbling past people. Someone spoke to him angrily, but he did not stop to excuse himself. He could still see the vivid spot of orange -yes, it was a headscarf-the woman's back was to him, but she was tall, like his mother-he had to catch up, there were too many people in the way—↵
A half-sob broke free from Salva's lips. He mustn't lose track of her!

Chapter 12↵
"Mother! Mother, please!"↵
Salva opened his mouth to call out again. But the words did not come. Instead, he closed his mouth, lowered his head, and turned away.↵
The woman in the orange headscarf was not his mother. He knew this for certain, even though she was still far away and he had not seen her face.↵
Uncle's words came back to him: "The village of Loun-Arik was attacked... burned. Few people survived... no one knows where they are now."↵
In the moment before calling out to the woman a second time, Salva realized what Uncle had truly meant-something Salva had known in his heart for a long time:↵
His family was gone. They had been killed by bullets or bombs, starvation or sickness-it did not matter how. What mattered was that Salva was on his own now.

Six years later: July 1991↵
"They are going to close the camp. Everyone will have to leave."↵
"That's impossible. Where will we go?"↵
"That's what they're saying. Not just this camp. All of them."↵
The rumors skittered around the camp. Everyone was uneasy. As the days went by, the uneasiness grew into fear.↵
Salva was almost seventeen years old now-a young man. He tried to learn what he could about the rumors by talking to the aid workers in the camp. They told him that the Ethiopian government was near collapse. The refugee camps were run by foreign aid groups, but it was the government that permitted them to operate. If the government fell, what would the new rulers do about the camps?↵
When that question was answered, no one was ready. One rainy morning, as Salva walked toward the school tent, long lines of trucks were arriving. Masses of armed soldiers poured out of the trucks and ordered everyone to leave.↵
The orders were not just to leave the camp but to leave Ethiopia.

The soldiers fired their guns into the air and chased the people away from the camp. But once they were beyond the area surrounding the camp, the soldiers continued to drive them onward, shouting and shooting.↵
As he dashed ahead, Salva heard snatches of talk.↵
"The river." "They're chasing us toward the river!"↵
Salva knew which river they meant: the Gilo River, which was along the border between Ethiopia and Sudan.↵
They are driving us back to Sudan, Salva thought. They will force us to cross the river....↵
It was the rainy season. Swollen by the rains, the Gil's current would be merciless.↵
The Gilo was well known for something else, too.↵
Crocodiles.

Chapter 14↵
For three days, the air around Nya's home was filled with the sound of the drill. On the third afternoon, Nya joined the other children gathered around the drill site. The grownups rose from their work pounding rocks and drifted over, too.↵
The workers seemed excited. They were moving quickly as their leader called out orders. Then—↵
WHOOSH! A spray of water shot high into the air!↵
This wasn't the water that the workers had been piping into the borehole. This was new water—water that was coming out of the hole!↵
Everyone cheered at the sight of the water. They all laughed at the sight of the two workers who had been operating the drill. They were drenched, their clothes completely soaked through.↵
A woman in the crowd began singing a song of celebration. Nya clapped her hands along with all the other children. But as Nya watched the water spraying out of the borehole, she frowned.↵
The water wasn't clear. It was brown and heavy-looking. It was full of mud.

Ifo-refugee camp, Kenya, 1992-96↵
Salva was now twenty-two years old. For the past five years he had been living in refugee camps in northern Kenya: first at the Kakuma camp, then at Ifo.↵
Kakuma had been a dreadful place, isolated in the middle of a dry, windy desert. Tall fences of barbed wire enclosed the camp; you weren't allowed to leave unless you were leaving for good. It felt almost like a prison.↵
Seventy thousand people lived at Kakuma. Some said it was more, eighty or ninety thousand. There were families who had managed to escape together, but again, as in Ethiopia, most of the refugees were orphaned boys and young men.↵
The local people who lived in the area did not like having the refugee camp nearby. They would often sneak in and steal from the refugees. Sometimes fights broke out, and people were hurt or killed.↵
After two years of misery at Kakuma, Salva decided to leave the camp. He had heard of another refugee camp, far to the south and east, where he hoped things would be better.↵
Once again, Salva and a few other young men walked for months. But when they reached the camp at Ifo, they found that things were no different than at Kakuma. Everyone was always hungry, and there was never enough food.

Many were sick or had gotten injured during their long, terrible journeys to reach the camp; the few medical volunteers could not care for everyone who needed help.↵
Salva felt fortunate that at least he was in good health.↵
He wanted desperately to work-to make a little money that he could use to buy extra food. He even dreamed of saving some money so that one day he could leave the camp and continue his education somehow.↵
But there was no work. There was nothing to do but wait-wait for the next meal, for news of the world outside the camp. The days were long and empty. They stretched into weeks, then months, then years.↵
It was hard to keep hope alive when there was so little to feed it.↵
Michael was an aid worker from a country called Ireland.↵
Salva had met a lot of aid workers. They came and went, staying at the camp for several weeks or, at most, a few months. The aid workers came from many different countries, but they usually spoke English to each other. Few of the refugees spoke English, so communication with the aid workers was often difficult.↵
But after so many years in the camps, Salva could understand a little English. He even tried to speak it once in a while, and Michael almost always seemed to understand what Salva was trying to say.↵
One day after the morning meal, Michael spoke to Salva. You seem interested in learning English, he said.↵
How'd you like to learn to read?↵
The lessons began that very day. Michael wrote down three letters on a small scrap of paper.↵
A, B, C, he said, handing the scrap to Salva.↵
A, B, C, Salva repeated.↵
The whole rest of the day, Salva went around saying,↵
A, B, C, mostly to himself but sometimes aloud, in a quiet voice. He looked at the paper a hundred times and practiced drawing the letters in the dirt with a stick, over and over again.↵
Salva remembered learning to read Arabic when he was young. The Arabic alphabet had twenty-eight letters; the English, only twenty-six. In English, the letters stayed separate from each other, so it was easy to tell them apart.↵
In Arabic words, the letters were always joined, and a letter might look different depending on what came before or after it.↵
Sure, you're doing lovely, Michael said the day Salva learned to write his own name. You learn fast, because you work so hard.↵
Salva did not say what he was thinking: that he was working hard because he wanted to learn to read English before Michael left the camp. Salva did not know if any of the other aid workers would take the time to teach him.↵
But once in a while it's good to take a break from work. Let's do something a wee bit different for a change.↵
I'm thinking you'll be good at this-you're a tall lad.↵
So Salva learned two things from Michael: how to read and how to play volleyball.

A rumor was spreading through the camp. It began as a whisper, but soon Salva felt as if it were a roar in his ears.↵
He could think of nothing else.↵
America. The United States.↵
The rumor was that about three thousand boys and young men from the refugee camps would be chosen to go live in America!↵
Salva could not believe it. How could it be true? How would they get there? Where would they live? Surely it was impossible...↵
But as the days went by, the aid workers confirmed the news.↵
It was all anyone could talk about.↵
"They only want healthy people. If you are sick, you won't be chosen."↵
"They won't take you if you have ever been a soldier with the rebels."↵
"Only orphans are being chosen. If you have any family left, you have to stay here."↵
Weeks passed, then months. One day a notice was posted at the camp's administration tent. It was a list of names. If your name was on the list, it meant that you had made it to the next step: the interview. After the interview, you might go to America.↵
Salva's name was not on the list.↵
Nor was it on the next list, or the one after that.↵
Many of the boys being chosen were younger than Salva. Perhaps America doesn't want anyone too old, he thought.↵
Each time a list was posted, Salva's heart would pound as he read the names. 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.↵
One windy afternoon, Michael rushed over to Salvas tent.↵
"Salva! Come quickly! Your name is on the list today!" Salva leapt to his feet and was running even before his friend had finished speaking. When he drew near the administration tent, he slowed down and tried to catch his breath.↵
He might be wrong. It might be another person named Salva. I won't look too soon... From far away I might see a name that looks like mine, and I need to be sure.↵
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!