Nya is the other main character in A Long Walk to Water, also based on a real person. A young girl, Nya spends much of her waking life walking to and from a large pond, miles away from her family’s village. She collects water from the pond into a gourd, balances the gourd on her head, and walks home, where she immediately deposits the water, turns back, and does it all over again. Linda Sue Park doesn’t spend much time describing Nya’s personality—readers know that she’s a devoted sister and a loving daughter, but don’t know much else about her. In many ways, Nya’s role in the book is to serve as a witness to the enormous changes affecting her village in the early 2000s: thanks to Salva Dut’s activism, wells are being built, bringing safe drinking water to thousands and saving Nya countless hours of work, which frees her to begin attending school.
