A Day In South Sudan

• Niamh Roe, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2021

It’s flash flood season in my country South Sudan, the clouds hover stubbornly and heavily over our cabbage fields threatening to pour litres and litres of water into the vast valley and I’m on the other side of it racing the rain, determined to get home or on top of the hill behind my house before the flooding begins. I suddenly feel my chest rattling as a deep roll of thunder rips through the peaceful afternoon, a single drop of water lands on my scalp, then another and another, quickly the rain begins to drench me covering my head. The dry earth turns to sticky mud beneath my feet. I won’t make it to the hilltop. I'm already worn out, I don’t run much and even if I did I’m not fast not at all, so I begin to look for something to climb, something that’s out of the way of the flooding. Nothing, the cabbage field is perfect for crops but not for flooding because there’s not a bump or dent in the earth. The sky pelts me with another round of hard rain, the flooding is beginning, the water is ankle deep, my wet, cold bare feet splash through the water desperate to get to safety, to my ma and pa.

For the past few minutes it feels like I haven’t made any progress at all, the hilltop still kilometres away and my house sitting just below the peak. Then I hear “Angelica!” A nearby voice screams with panic and fear, “where are you?”
A mother that helps our family harvest our cabbages and sell them in the market is standing there looking into the distance trying to find the silhouette of her daughter. I hesitate when I see her, tempted to help her look with her but I have to do what my ma has taught me for years; in the case of a flood always save yourself people will find a way to survive. I was so in the moment of that memory that I realised that the water had risen to at least half way up my calf. I look at the muddy brown water, then I trip down into one of the rabbit traps digging into my skin on my lower leg. I have to get up. I tear my leg from the trap, ripping it free, deciding that I have to get somewhere high in order to survive, I spot a small hill barely risen out of the water just outside of the cabbage field, so I climb up the small hill seeking refuge out of the water. I collapse onto the soft mud as I feel a pair of hands lift me gently toward my home