Nyala's Mistake

If your existence was as significant as a gecko's at a watering hole in Chad, Ethiopia or Kenya, what would your world consist of when you're taking off on a daily adventure.

Summary

You, the protagonist are a gecko called Garry, living in a symbiotic relationship with a local girl, seeing her grow up. The humans don't have plumbing that allows running water in their homes, and the community is extremely poor. They fetch water from a nearby stream, and Nyala, a young resident walks down a mountainous path every morning before school to supply her household of their daily water requirement.

Another boy is interested to befriend Nyala, even hands his filled bottle to her in return for her empty one. Nyala acknowledges the gesture as a form of friendship, but her aspirations to be something more in life won't allow the friendship to turn romantic.

Nyala finds that by running well, she could earn a university scholarship and leave poverty in her rearview mirror.

She befriends a senior by gesturing romanticism in order to gain favor for help and possibly cement her chances to secure her scholarship. She also trains every day by running everywhere she goes. The bottle of water serves a weight training to make her stronger.

Years later, Nyala gets the scholarship, and studies whatever she wants, as long as she represents the University in her running progress, so she picked a course that will benefit her village running water problem and maybe get the University or the government to pay for the project. The water already became less available as where they once dipped their containers into a stream, the now had to use a cup to fill the unsanitary water. The stream also provided water to the rest of nature's creatures, and the equipment that came and connected the village's running water from the earth, hogged life from the ecosystem.

Gary's family dies due to thirst, and although Nyala succeeded as a human in a world where progress seems to head into a direction where humans are better off, making life easier for ourselves.

Inspiration to this story

During the hard lockdown when we weren't allowed to go anywhere, I saw a YouTube documentary about a girl who collected water for her family, and walked very far to get home. It is part of their culture where the kids carry the heavy loads home. The water makes them sick, but it is all they have to drink and wash with.

Although they struggle to get the water home, they also share the liquid life with the rest of the ecosystem, sometimes waiting their turn.

Lessons

We all strive for progress, but we rarely consider our impact on the environment and what changes our progress will bring.

If you like to read the story, you are welcome to buy the book from our store page. It is available in eBook format at Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, as well as in a Print on demand paperback format at Amazon Paperback. In South Africa, I recommend buying from Takealot.