A Long Walk to Water · Garden Heights

Part 4

for A Long Walk to Water · Part 4 · Chapters 8–10

8 Parts40 min

What Happens in Part 4

Akeer is saved at the clinic and strangers promise water, while Salva crosses river and desert — and loses Uncle.

Water That SickensIn 2008, Akeer, too weak to walk, is carried the long way to a clinic, where medicine pulls her back. The nurse warns that the sickness came from the water itself, which carries something invisible and should be boiled — advice Nya's mother knows is worthless, since the small amounts they fetch would half vanish as steam before boiling finished.

Strangers with JeepsThen something new rolls into the village: a jeep carrying two strangers, who speak with the older boys and sit with the village chief to talk, of all things, about water. Ground is cleared between two big trees, where the visitors say water lies underneath — a claim Nya cannot believe about her dry, dusty home.

River and DesertIn 1985 the group crosses the great river in canoes of lashed papyrus reeds, resting at a midstream island where generous fishing families give fish, yams, cassava, and sugar cane; the travelers eat their fill, then slap at mosquitoes all night. Beyond lies the desert: relentless heat, rocks, thorns, a three-day march. When Salva's toenail tears away, Uncle rebuilds him, calling him Salva Mawien Dut Ariik and asking him to walk only to the next clump of bushes.

Uncle Is KilledDeeper in the desert they find nine men collapsed and dying of thirst; some women share sips from their gourds, and a few men rise, but five are past saving. Then six armed men step from the emptiness, strip the group of everything worth taking, tie Uncle to a tree, and shoot him three times. The group can only keep walking — and Salva, for the first time, is truly alone.

What We Will Learn

Section	What you will practice
Vocabulary	Rivers, deserts, and loss: papyrus, current, parched, gourd, grief…
Literary Elements	Juxtaposition across two timelines, understatement at the story’s hardest moment, and a motif of water that keeps changing sides
Cross-Curricular	The White Nile — where the great river comes from, how people cross it on bundled reeds, and why it is both a road and a wall

Chapter Summary

Ch.	What happens
Chapter 8	Across the Great River — At the clinic, medicine pulls Akeer back, and a nurse warns that the family’s water caused the sickness and should be boiled — advice nearly impossible to follow. Salva’s group crosses the Nile in reed canoes, is fed generously in an island fishing village, and spends a sleepless night under whining clouds of mosquitoes.
Chapter 9	One Clump of Bushes — A jeep brings two strangers to Nya’s village, and they sit down with the chief to talk about water. In the desert, Salva’s toenail tears away on a rock; Uncle steadies him with his full name and leads him across the burning flat one small goal at a time.
Chapter 10	Guns in the Desert — Ground is cleared between two big trees, where the visitors say water waits underneath; Nya doubts it. Salva’s group tends nine men dying of thirst — some of the women share water from their gourds, yet five cannot be saved. Then six armed men rob the travelers of everything, tie Uncle Jewiir to a tree, and shoot him.

Part 1

Vocabulary

Study 10 key words from Chapters 8–10, then answer each question.

📚Knowledge Bank · The Reed That Carries People

Ecology · PapyrusPapyrus is not a grass or a tree but a giant sedge — a grasslike plant of shallow water — that grows up to fifteen feet tall along the White Nile. Its secret is hidden inside the stalk: a spongy core packed with air pockets that makes cut stems remarkably buoyant. Lash enough of them into a tapered bundle and you have a canoe that rides high, costs nothing but labor, and can be rebuilt from any stand of reeds. Egyptians were making boats this way five thousand years ago, and they pressed the same stalks into the world’s first paper — our word for it still echoes the plant’s name. The plant engineers its own neighborhood, too: dense stands slow the current, trap drifting silt, and shelter fish and waterbirds, which is why whole fishing peoples build their lives inside the reed beds. The canoes that carry Salva’s group across the Nile are that same ancient technology, cut fresh from the river.

Tall papyrus stems topped with feathery green umbrellas growing thickly at the edge of the Nile, with open water and a flat far bank behind — Photograph of papyrus growing wild along the Nile in Uganda, upstream of Sudan on the same river system the Knowledge Bank describes. Each feathery umbrella tops a stalk whose spongy, air-filled core makes cut stems float — the buoyancy that lets fishermen lash bundles into the canoes that carry Salva’s group across. The photograph shows the plant, not a boat, and not the Sudd: that wetland lies hundreds of miles downstream. Notice how densely the stand grows; beds like this are what early explorers could not force a way through.
Papyrus growing wild along the Nile in Uganda; photograph by Michael Shade, 2006. Source: Wikimedia Commons, File:Papyrus along the Nile in Uganda - by Michael Shade.jpg, public domain.

papyrusn.Ch.8

A tall marsh reed whose air-filled stalks can be bundled into boats

“The canoes that carried the group were lashed together from papyrus.”

currentn.Ch.8

The steady flow of water moving in one direction

“The paddlers fought the river’s current all the way across.”

hospitalityn.Ch.8

Generous, friendly care for guests

“The island villagers showed the hungry travelers real hospitality.”

relentlessadj.Ch.9

Never stopping, easing, or letting up

“The relentless sun hammered the walkers from dawn to dusk.”

parchedadj.Ch.9

Dried out by heat and desperate for water

“By midday every throat in the group was parched.”

staggerv.Ch.9

To walk unsteadily, as if about to fall

“The rough, burning ground made the weakest walkers stagger.”

endurev.Ch.9

To suffer through something hard without giving up

“Uncle showed Salva how to endure the desert one goal at a time.”

gourdn.Ch.10

A hard-shelled fruit hollowed out and dried to carry water

“Each woman poured a few careful drops from her gourd.”

plunderv.Ch.10

To rob goods by force, especially in wartime

“The armed men had come to plunder the travelers of everything.”

griefn.Ch.10

Deep sorrow after a loss

“Grief followed Salva away from the tree where Uncle died.”

ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1According to the Knowledge Bank, dense stands of papyrus reshape their own neighborhood by ___.Ch.8

2A ‘current’ is the steady movement of water in one direction.Ch.8

3‘Hospitality’ means ___.Ch.8

4A ‘relentless’ sun is one that ___.Ch.9

5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.9

Word choices:parchedstaggerpapyrusgourd- some words will not be used

By afternoon every mouth in the group was .

The rough ground made the weakest walkers .

6A ‘gourd’ is used in these chapters as ___.Ch.10

7To ‘plunder’ is to give away your own belongings.Ch.10

8To ‘endure’ hardship is to ___.Ch.9

9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.10

Word choices:plundergriefcurrentendure- some words will not be used

The raiders came to everything the group carried.

After the shots, Salva walked on through his .

10‘Grief’ is deep sorrow felt after a loss.Ch.10

Part 2

Comprehension

Show you understood what happens in Chapters 8–10.

🔍Knowledge Bank · A River in Two Halves

Geography · The White NileThe river Salva must cross is one half of a famous pair. The White Nile rises far to the south, where highland streams fill Lake Victoria, and flows north with slow, steady patience; the Blue Nile drops out of Ethiopia’s mountains carrying the violent summer flood. The pairing solves a five-thousand-year-old puzzle: Egypt’s fields depended on the Blue Nile’s wild summer surge, yet the river never ran dry between floods, because the White Nile’s steady, lake-fed flow kept it alive through the lean months. The White Nile’s special burden is the Sudd, a wetland so vast and so tangled with papyrus that early explorers simply could not force their way through it; in that swamp the river spreads thin and loses about half of its water to the sky before it can escape north. What survives creeps on across the plains of Sudan until, after thousands of winding miles, the two rivers finally braid into one at Khartoum.

Visual AidTwo rivers, one Nile

Structure diagram of the five-thousand-year-old puzzle the Knowledge Bank solves: the White Nile rises at Lake Victoria and flows slow and steady all year, loses about half its water to the sky in the Sudd, and braids with the Blue Nile’s violent summer flood at Khartoum. Distances are compressed to nothing and the rivers’ thousands of winding miles are drawn as three arrows; no real map looks like this. The diagram claims only the relationship — flood plus steadiness — and marks where Salva’s crossing sits: on the steady, patient half of the pair.

Course of the White and Blue Niles and the Sudd’s evaporation losses, per standard geographies of the Nile basin. Drawn for Garden Heights Academy.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1The Knowledge Bank explains that Egypt's river never ran dry between floods because ___.Ch.8

2Where is Akeer taken when she grows too weak to walk?Ch.8

3The people of the island village share food with the travelers.Ch.8

4Why do two strangers arrive at Nya’s village in a jeep?Ch.9

5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 8–10

Uncle leads Salva across the desert one clump of bushes at a time.
The group paddles across the great river in reed canoes.
The women wet the lips of dying men with water from their gourds.
A sleepless, mosquito-filled night passes in the fishing village.
Armed raiders rob the group and kill Uncle Jewiir.

6Salva’s group crosses the desert in a single afternoon.Ch.9

7What happens to Salva’s foot in the desert?Ch.9

8What is Akeer’s family told made her so sick?Ch.8

9Some of the women share water from their gourds with the dying men.Ch.10

10What do the armed men do before they leave?Ch.10

Part 3

Literary Elements

Understanding HOW and WHY Linda Sue Park tells the story across Chapters 8–10.

🎭Knowledge Bank · Saying Less at the Worst Moment

Authorial Craft · RestraintThe most brutal scene in Part 4 is told in some of the plainest sentences in the book. Linda Sue Park (author) does not slow down for Uncle’s death, does not linger over Salva’s shock, and does not tell readers what to feel; the shots are simply counted, and the story walks on. That deliberate quiet is understatement, and it works because a reader’s imagination is louder than any adjective. Ernest Hemingway compared prose like this to an iceberg, seven-eighths of its weight riding underwater; the fewer words a terrible scene spends, the more force each remaining word must carry. She pairs it with two other tools: juxtaposition, which sets Nya’s poisoned water beside Salva’s deadly thirst without a word of comment, and a running motif of water that keeps changing sides — road, meal, sickness, salvation. All three tools obey one principle: the author steps back and leaves room for the reader’s own feeling.

Juxtaposition

Nya’s 2008 chapters sit beside Salva’s 1985 chapters with no comment between them; the gap between two kinds of thirst is the meaning.

Understatement

The worst moments — gunshots, a death — arrive in short, level sentences that trust the reader to feel what the words hold back.

Motif

Water returns in scene after scene as road, meal, sickness, and rescue; and a full name, spoken like a rope, pulls Salva forward.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1According to the Knowledge Bank, Hemingway's iceberg comparison means that in restrained prose, ___.Ch.8

2Telling Uncle’s death in a few plain, quiet sentences is ___.Ch.10

3A motif is an image or phrase that repeats and gathers meaning.Ch.9

4The full name ‘Salva Mawien Dut Ariik,’ repeated to give strength, is best called ___.Ch.9

5Understatement means describing an event with far more drama than it deserves.Ch.10

6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.10

Word choices:juxtapositionunderstatementmotifhyperbole- some words will not be used

Setting Akeer’s dirty-water sickness beside Salva’s deadly thirst is .

Reporting three gunshots in one calm sentence is .

7What effect does the quiet telling of Uncle’s death create?Ch.10

8Juxtaposition means giving human qualities to a nonhuman thing.Ch.8

9By pairing the river that feeds a village with the pond water that sickens Akeer, Linda Sue Park (author) mainly builds ___.Ch.8

10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.9

Word choices:motifjuxtapositionunderstatementpersonification- some words will not be used

Water returning in scene after scene, for good and for ill, is a .

Giving human qualities to a nonhuman thing is .

Part 4

Think Deeper

Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.

💡Knowledge Bank · Lifeline and Barrier

History · Crossing PointsRivers are history’s great double agents. A wide river is a highway for anyone with a boat and a wall for everyone without one, so the places where people can cross — a ford, a ferry, a bridge — become the most valuable ground in a region. Markets grow there; towns follow; armies fight over them. The map of the world proves the rule: London, Paris, and ancient Rome all began at the lowest easy crossing of a river, the one spot where every road had no choice but to meet. The White Nile shows the pattern plainly: for years South Sudan had a single permanent bridge across it, at the capital, Juba, and everywhere else the river was crossed the old way, by boat, or not at all. In wartime that scarcity turns deadly, because the fleeing, the trading, and the armed all funnel toward the same few points. When Salva’s group paddles ashore on the far bank, it has done something armies plan campaigns around: it has beaten a crossing.

Picture a river so wide that the far bank is only a gray line, and the boat under you is nothing but reeds — papyrus stalks lashed into a bundle, riding the current of the longest river on Earth. Salva crosses the Nile by canoe, eats his first real meal in weeks in a fishing village built on an island in the middle of the water, and then lies awake all night while mosquitoes whine in his ears. On the far side waits the opposite of a river: a desert that takes three days to walk if nothing goes wrong. Something goes wrong. And twenty-three years later, in the same country, a girl named Nya sits beside her little sister’s sickbed and hears a simple, terrible sentence: the water made her sick. The same water the family drinks every single day. Part 4 is where water shows both of its faces.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1Claim: “In Part 4, water decides who is safe and who is in danger in both timelines.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence

2Salva — 1985, or Nya — 2008? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two

◄ Salva — 1985Nya — 2008 ►

3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect

A day of paddling ends at an island in the river→

Salva stubs his bare toe on a rock→

Akeer drinks the only water her family has→

Armed men stop the group and strip it of everything→

🧠Knowledge Bank question

4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument

The few places where a river can be crossed become the most valuable ground in a region because , which shows that .

Part 5

Standardized Test

The River That Is a Road · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice

The River That Is a Road

Measured from its farthest headwaters, the Nile runs about 4,100 miles — usually enough to call it the longest river on Earth. The branch known as the White Nile begins where highland streams gather into Lake Victoria, in east-central Africa. From the lake's northern shore the young river tumbles north through rapids and enters the flat country of South Sudan. There it slows and spreads into the Sudd, one of the largest wetlands in the world, a shifting maze of papyrus and floating grass. In that endless swamp the river loses roughly half of its water to evaporation.

For the people along its banks, the river has always been both gift and obstacle. Bridges are rare — for years South Sudan had just one permanent bridge — so nearly every crossing is made by boat. The oldest boat is also the simplest: papyrus stalks, their spongy cores packed with air, are lashed into bundles so buoyant that a slender canoe rides high even under a grown man's weight. A builder can shape one in days from plants growing free at the water's edge, and replace it when it soaks through.

No one, however, steps carelessly into the relentless current, which never slackens. Crocodiles and hippopotamuses live in these waters, and the channels are treacherous, braiding and shifting with every flood season. A crossing can swallow an entire day of paddling, broken by rest stops on mid-river islands where fishing families make their homes and offer travelers simple hospitality. Yet the same waters sustain every village within reach, supplying fish, reeds for boats and roofs, and water for cattle and gardens. On a map a river divides the land; in daily life it feeds everyone bold enough to cross it.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas

2According to the passage, the White Nile begins where highland streams gather into ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

3In the Sudd, the river loses about half of its water to ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

4Why do papyrus canoes float so well?SAT · Inference

5Insert Text (TOEFL). Look at the four squares [1]–[4] in the excerpt below. They show where this sentence could be added:
“Whatever survives that slow, wandering passage continues north toward the sea.”

From the lake’s northern shore the young river tumbles north through rapids and enters the flat country of South Sudan. [1] In that endless swamp the river loses roughly half of its water to evaporation. [2] There it slows and spreads into the Sudd, one of the largest wetlands in the world, a shifting maze of papyrus and floating grass. [3] The branch known as the White Nile begins where highland streams gather into Lake Victoria, in east-central Africa. [4]

Where would the sentence fit best?TOEFL · Insert Text

6In the passage, buoyant most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

7The passage says mid-river islands are used for ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

8In the passage, hospitality most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

9In the passage, relentless most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary

10How does this passage best help explain Part 4?SAT · Author’s Purpose

Part 6 · Optional

Creative Writing

A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.

About This Section

This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!

Writing Task — Part 4 “One Clump of Bushes at a Time”

In the desert, Uncle never asks Salva to be brave about the whole journey. He points to a clump of bushes and asks him to walk only that far — then finds him the next goal, and the next. Write about a time something in your life felt too big to finish — a project, a move, a season, a loss — and how it changed when you broke it into small steps, or how it might have. 6–10 sentences. End with the words you would say to someone standing at the edge of their own desert.

You can start with: “From where I stood, the finish line was not even visible...”

0 / 40 words minimum

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.

Part 4 Complete!

You finished Chapters 8–10 of A Long Walk to Water.

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🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

Move on to Part 5 →

Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Linda Sue Park. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Linda Sue Park’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.