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A Long Walk to Water · Garden Heights
Part 5
for A Long Walk to Water · Part 5 · Chapters 11–12
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 5
Orphaned again, Salva walks on to Ethiopia's Itang camp, while Nya's village begins drilling for unbelievable water.
One Step OnThe group buries Uncle Jewiir where he died and mourns him only briefly; the walk cannot wait. Numb but changed, Salva stops trailing at the back and walks steadily, one step and then another, the way his uncle taught him — because quitting now would waste everything Uncle did to bring him this far.
An Unwanted MouthUncle's protection dies with him. Without his gun and his standing, the walkers treat Salva as a mouth they never agreed to feed, sharing food grudgingly when they share at all, their voices expecting him to give up. He decides they will be wrong. At last the group crosses into Ethiopia and reaches Itang, a refugee camp swollen with thousands upon thousands, where there is food, no shooting, and — strangely — no walking.
The Orange HeadscarfSalva searches every crowd for his family. When he spots a tall woman in a bright orange headscarf — the color his mother always wore — he shoves through the throng, telling himself everything can still be mended. The woman turns; the face is a stranger's. Salva faces what Uncle hinted: his family is almost certainly gone. He grieves — then chooses to live, as they would want. Six years pass at Itang, and the boy becomes a young man.
The Iron DrillA generation later, Nya's village clears the land between the two biggest trees, cutting and hauling brush because the visitors said water lies beneath the ground. Nya keeps making her long walks to the pond, unable to believe it. Then the visitors return with a machine taller than a hut — a great iron drill — and the whole village works beside it, breaking rock into gravel, while Nya still cannot see how pounding and dust could turn into water.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Loss, crowds, and holding on: numb, grudging, refuge, throng, endure…
Literary Elements
Symbolism carried by an orange headscarf, internal conflict between hope and grief, and pacing that spends pages on minutes and a few lines on six years
Cross-Curricular
How refugee camps work — the UN refugee agency, registration and rations, unaccompanied minors, and why shelters meant for months last for decades
Chapter Summary
Ch.
What happens
Chapter 11
Alone on the Road — The group buries Uncle Jewiir and walks on. Grieving and numb, Salva refuses to fall behind; he takes the journey one step at a time, as his uncle taught him. Without Uncle’s protection the others share food grudgingly and treat him as a burden, so Salva quietly resolves to prove them wrong. The walkers cross the border into Ethiopia and reach the vast Itang refugee camp — food, safety, thousands of unknown faces, and, one day, a flash of orange cloth in the crowd. In Nya’s village, meanwhile, the people are clearing the land between the two biggest trees because the visitors have promised water beneath it; Nya, still walking to the pond every day, cannot believe them.
Chapter 12
The Orange Scarf — In the crowded camp Salva spots a tall woman wearing a headscarf of bright orange, his mother’s color, and chases her through the throng with his heart hammering. The woman turns: a stranger. Salva finally lets himself believe what Uncle had hinted — that his family is probably gone — and then decides that they would want him to survive. Six years pass at Itang, and the boy grows into a young man. In Nya’s village, the visitors return with a towering iron machine — a drill — and set the villagers to breaking rock into gravel beside the two big trees. Nya watches the pounding and the dust and still cannot see how it will ever become water.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Chapters 11–12, then answer each question.
📚Knowledge Bank · Words That Flee
Etymology · The Vocabulary of FlightThe word refugee has a story folded inside it. Its root is the Latin verb fugere, to flee — the same root hiding in fugitive. Add re- and you get refuge, literally a place to flee back to; a refugee is a person still looking for one. English adopted the word around the 1680s, when Protestants called Huguenots fled France and crowded into London, and a name was needed for people defined by flight. The root still surfaces in centrifuge, a machine whose contents flee the center. Ration comes from Latin ratio, a calculation: a ration is not just food but food that has been counted, because in a camp arithmetic decides who eats. Throng is far older English, from a word meaning to press or crush — a crowd so dense it squeezes. Part 5 needs all three families of words at once, because Salva’s new world is built of flight, counting, and crowds, and every line of it presses on him like a throng.
Visual AidFood that has been counted
Photograph of a real ration book — issued in the United States in 1942, and photographed in a museum case. The Knowledge Bank traces ration to the Latin ratio, a calculation, because a ration is food that has been counted; this booklet is that idea made of paper, down to its serial number and its printed warnings. It is an American object from a different war, shown for the word, not the place: at Itang the counting ran through registration lists and measured scoops of grain, not booklets like this one. Notice that a government printed rules on the cover — where food is counted, arithmetic decides who eats.
War Ration Book One, Office of Price Administration, 1942; National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; photograph by Daderot, 2015. Source: Wikimedia Commons, File:War Ration Book One - National Museum of American History - DSC00067.jpg, public domain.
numbadj.Ch.11
Unable to feel; emptied of feeling for a time
“Salva felt numb as the group covered his uncle’s grave.”
grudgingadj.Ch.11
Given unwillingly, without any warmth
“The walkers shared their food in a grudging way, if at all.”
refugen.Ch.11
A place that gives shelter and safety from danger
“The camp at Itang offered refuge on the far side of the border.”
rationn.Ch.11
A fixed, measured share of food given out
“In the camp, each day’s ration had to be waited for in line.”
throngn.Ch.12
A large, tightly packed crowd of people
“Salva pushed through the throng to keep the scarf in sight.”
glimpsen.Ch.12
A quick, incomplete look at something
“One glimpse of orange cloth set his heart pounding.”
franticadj.Ch.12
Wild with worry or urgency
“His search through the crowded lanes grew frantic.”
orphann.Ch.12
A child whose parents have died
“Salva feared the word orphan might now belong to him.”
endurev.Ch.12
To keep going through something hard and lasting
“Salva chose to endure the camp’s long, empty years.”
surveyv.Ch.11
To look over and measure land carefully
“The visitors had come earlier to survey the ground between the two trees.”
ⓘ 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, the word refuge literally means ___.Ch.11
2‘Grudging’ help is offered gladly and with a warm heart.Ch.11
3A ‘refuge’ is a place that offers ___.Ch.11
4A ‘ration’ is a share of food that is ___.Ch.11
5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.12
Word choices:throngglimpsenumbsurvey- some words will not be used
Salva pushed through the toward the orange scarf.
One of orange cloth set his heart pounding.
6A ‘frantic’ search is ___.Ch.12
7An ‘orphan’ is a child whose parents have died.Ch.12
8To ‘endure’ hardship is to ___.Ch.12
9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.12
Word choices:endurefranticorphanration- some words will not be used
Salva refused to believe he was already an .
He made up his mind to whatever came next.
10To ‘survey’ land is to look it over and measure it carefully.Ch.12
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Chapters 11–12.
🌍Knowledge Bank · A City Nobody Meant to Build
Geography · Itang and the Gambela LowlandsItang is a real place. It sits in Ethiopia’s Gambela region, a hot, flat lowland near the Baro River, close to the Sudanese border. When civil war pushed waves of southern Sudanese east in the mid-1980s, aid agencies raised a camp there, and it swelled with astonishing speed; within a few years Itang was counted among the largest refugee settlements on Earth, sheltering well over a hundred thousand people. Yet it had none of the machinery of a real city — no farms of its own, no factories, almost no way to earn a living — so nearly everything its people ate had to be trucked in along fragile roads that rainy-season mud could close for weeks. The camp’s existence balanced on politics as much as on trucks: it stood on Ethiopian soil only because Ethiopia’s government of the moment chose to shelter Sudan’s southern refugees — a hospitality, the novel will soon show, that could be canceled overnight. Salva’s six quiet years pass inside that arithmetic: a whole city fed entirely from outside.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1The Knowledge Bank explains that Itang's food supply was fragile because ___.Ch.11
2How do the other walkers treat Salva once his uncle is gone?Ch.11
3After the burial, Salva stops walking and stays behind on the trail.Ch.11
4Where does the group’s long walk finally end?Ch.11
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 11–12
The walkers reach the crowded camp at Itang.
An orange headscarf sends Salva racing through the crowd.
A stranger’s face ends the search for his mother.
The group buries Uncle Jewiir beside the trail.
Salva walks on, living on grudging scraps of food.
6By the end of Part 5, Salva has spent about six years at the camp.Ch.12
7Why does the orange headscarf seize Salva’s attention?Ch.12
8What truth must Salva face when the woman turns around?Ch.12
9Nya finds it easy to believe that water could lie under such dry ground.Ch.11
10Why are the villagers clearing the land between the two big trees?Ch.11
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Linda Sue Park tells the story across Chapters 11–12.
⌛Knowledge Bank · Six Years in a Sentence
Authorial Craft · Narrative TimeWriters own the clock. A scene slows the story until it moves at the speed of life, minute by minute; a summary speeds it up; and an ellipsis — a deliberate gap that skips over time — can throw whole years away between two sentences. Linda Sue Park (author) uses all three in Part 5. Salva’s chase after the orange scarf lasts only minutes, yet it fills page after page, every shove through the crowd recorded. A rough formula separates the three speeds: when the story’s clock runs slower than the reader’s, that is scene; when it runs faster, summary; when years pass and the page spends nothing at all, ellipsis. Then six years at Itang vanish into a few plain lines. The imbalance is the meaning. The chase is the last moment when hope makes anything urgent, so it earns the full slow treatment; the years that follow hold only food lines and sameness. When a writer skips time, read the skip: it is the sound of waiting.
Visual AidThe story’s clock, the page’s space
Measure diagram of the three speeds the Knowledge Bank separates: scene, where minutes of story fill page after page; summary, where months shrink to paragraphs; and ellipsis, where six years pass between two sentences and the page spends nothing at all. The bars compare page-space, not importance, and their lengths are illustrative, not counted from the book. The imbalance is Linda Sue Park (author)’s deliberate choice, and reading it is the skill this Knowledge Bank teaches: when a writer skips time, read the skip.
Scene, summary and ellipsis as defined in standard narratology (e.g., Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, 1972). Drawn for Garden Heights Academy.
Symbolism
An ordinary object stands for something far larger — an orange headscarf carries every hope Salva has of finding his mother alive.
Internal Conflict
A struggle fought inside a character: Salva must weigh the hope that his family lives against the growing fear that they are gone.
Pacing
The speed at which story time passes. Linda Sue Park (author) spends pages on a minutes-long chase, then crosses six years in a handful of lines.
🧠Knowledge Bank question
1According to the Knowledge Bank, a passage counts as a scene when ___.Ch.12
2Salva’s silent battle between hope and grief is best called ___.Ch.12
3Pacing refers to how quickly or slowly story time passes on the page.Ch.12
4Compressing six camp years into a few lines is a choice about ___.Ch.12
5A symbol must be a rare and magical object rather than an everyday one.Ch.12
6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.12
Word choices:symbolismpacingdialoguesetting- some words will not be used
A scarf carrying all of Salva’s hope is .
Pages for minutes and lines for years is a matter of .
7When the stranger’s face ends the chase, the scarf’s meaning shifts from hope to ___.Ch.12
8Salva’s main conflict in Part 5 is a physical fight against another person.Ch.12
9Which detail best shows Linda Sue Park (author) controlling the pacing?Ch.12
10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.12
Word choices:internalexternalsymbolsetting- some words will not be used
Hope battling grief inside Salva is conflict.
The orange scarf works as a of family.
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
💡Knowledge Bank · The Machinery of Hope
Psychology · Why Survivors Keep WalkingPeople who study survivors of war and disaster keep finding the same pattern: the ones who last are rarely the strongest — they are the ones with a reason. Viktor Frankl, a doctor who survived Nazi concentration camps, wrote that a prisoner with a purpose — a person to find, a task to finish — could endure conditions that broke others. Studies of shipwrecks and earthquakes since have kept agreeing with him: survivors most often credit not strength or fitness but attachment — someone waiting, something promised, a task left half finished. Psychologists call the capacity to recover from hardship resilience, and it is built, not born: from small achievable goals, from bonds with other people, and from a story about the future worth walking toward. Watch Salva assemble exactly that kit in Part 5. He borrows his uncle’s trick of shrinking an impossible journey into single steps, and when the scarf turns out to be a stranger’s, he replaces a hope with a purpose.
Picture an eleven-year-old boy standing beside a fresh grave scraped out of dry ground, listening to the group that is supposed to protect him discuss, in lowered voices, what a nuisance he has become. The one person who called him family is under the earth. The border is still days away. Now picture the same boy weeks later at the edge of a refugee camp so large he cannot see where it ends — more people gathered in one place than he has ever seen in his life, and not one face he knows. Safety, it turns out, can feel almost exactly like being lost. Then the crowd shifts, and he sees it: a flash of orange cloth, tied the way his mother always tied hers. Part 5 is about what hope does to a person who cannot afford it — and, more than twenty years later, about Nya’s neighbors clearing the dry ground between two big trees because strangers have promised, calmly, that there is water underneath.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “Part 5 argues that survival is a decision Salva makes, not luck that simply happens to him.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2Salva’s story (1985), or Nya’s story (2008–2009)? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ Salva’s story (1985)Nya’s story (2008–2009) ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
Uncle Jewiir is buried beside the trail→
An orange headscarf appears in the crowd→
The tall woman turns out to be a stranger→
Word spreads of water beneath the two big trees→
🧠Knowledge Bank question
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
The Knowledge Bank's researchers found that the survivors who last usually have , which fits how Salva endures Part 5 by .
Part 5
Standardized Test
Inside a Refugee Camp · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice
Read the passage — the highlighted words are tested — then answer. Tap an answer, then tap it again to confirm.
SATCentral Ideas — the passage's main point
SATInference — a conclusion the passage implies
SATWords in Context — a word's meaning in this passage
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated in the passage
TOEFLVocabulary — a tested word's meaning here
Inside a Refugee Camp
From a distance, a refugee camp looks like confusion — a plain covered in shelters, smoke, and thousands of strangers. Up close, it runs on paperwork. Every new arrival is registered: a worker records names, lists family members traveling together, and issues a ration card — the small document that unlocks food, tools, and plastic sheeting. Behind the clipboards stands UNHCR — the United Nations refugee agency — which coordinates the host government and the charities that keep the camp supplied.
Food arrives on trucks, not from fields, so it is measured with care. On distribution days each family is allocated grain, beans, cooking oil, and salt — about 2,100 kilocalories of food energy per person per day. Water is pumped to taps or hauled from a river, and a patient throng waits in line for both, hundreds pressed close at every tap. Shelters are makeshift — poles, grass, and plastic sheeting — but they stand in numbered blocks so that aid workers and nurses can find people. Children who arrive with no parents, called unaccompanied minors, are counted separately and placed with adult caretakers.
The strangest fact about refugee camps is their age. A camp is planned as an emergency measure, meant to last only a few months; but wars rarely end on schedule, and host countries usually do not let refugees take jobs or farm land outside the fence. The result is a protracted situation, one that can endure year after year, in which children are born, grow up, and finish school without ever seeing their own country. Residents build what order they can, choosing block leaders and forming committees to keep distribution days fair. A camp, in the end, is a city whose citizens are all waiting.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1What is the passage mainly about?SAT · Central Ideas
2According to the passage, what does a ration card do?TOEFL · Factual Information
3Who coordinates the governments and charities that supply a camp?TOEFL · Factual Information
4Why do shelters stand in numbered blocks?SAT · Inference
5The passage says camp food is measured carefully because it ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
6According to the passage, who are ‘unaccompanied minors’?TOEFL · Factual Information
7Why do camps planned for months often last for decades?SAT · Inference
8In the passage, throng most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
9In the passage, makeshift most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
10In the passage, endure most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
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 5 “The Thing You Would Know Anywhere”
One flash of orange cloth is enough to send Salva running through a crowd of thousands. Think of an object you would recognize instantly because of the person it belongs to — a jacket, a bag, a car, a handwriting. Describe the object, the person, and one moment when seeing it — or losing it — changed how you felt. 6–10 sentences. End by explaining what the object stands for that could never fit in a pocket.
You can start with: “I would know it anywhere, even in a crowd...”
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 5 Complete!
You finished Chapters 11–12 of A Long Walk to Water.
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.
