Walking for Water: How One Boy Stood Up for Gender Equality

Engaging, colourful, simple but multilayered, evocative of a different culture, and empowering. It is hard to imagine a better told and more important story for children this age. Five stars plus for Walking for Water: How One Boy Stood Up for Gender Equality that uses a simple story and illustrations to explain the impact that one person can have to create change.

Based on the life and actions of a young boy in Malawi, a country in the southeastern part of Africa, this book tells the story of a pair of twins, one boy and one girl, and a thoughtful teacher. Once the twins turn eight-years-old, Linesi must stop attending school with her brother, Victor, and start helping the women of their village fetch drinking water from a river.

Although slightly uncomfortable at this change, Victor accepts it as ‘normal’ until a classroom discussion makes him recognize the inequity for what it is. But Victor must be an unusual person because he realizes that change is possible if he acts. Victor offers to share the water hauling duties on alternating days with his sister. They both get to go to school part-time and become their twin’s tutor after the water hauling duties. Victor’s and Linesi’s actions serve as role models, resulting in real change for the village girls and boys.

But it should be noted that the real instigator of this change is a very wise teacher. Mr. Tambala doesn’t just teach ‘about’ gender equality; he plants the seeds for his students to think critically about the topic and apply the concept to their own lives. Susan Hughes is a talented storyteller who seamlessly weaves details like Mr. Tambala’s questions into the story.

In Walking for Water, Susan Hughes and Nicole Miles have created a book that will appeal to both boys and girls, an extremely important factor for all discussions about gender equality. Although the idea for a change was proposed by Victor, both Victor and Linesi together put the idea into action, and both of them are impacted by the change.

Included at the back of the book is an “Author’s Note” describing the real Victor, the lack of access to clean water in his village, and the cost this has on girls and women. Not only are girls less likely to be able to continue their schooling, many girls are forced to marry at a young age, also limiting their chances to earn a good income.

Fortunately, there is good news in the “Author’s Note”.

But things are beginning to change. For example, in 2017, Malawi raised the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18. And by 2018, 80 percent of the country’s population had access to an improved source of drinking water.

A bonus is the list of translations for words in Chichewa, one of several languages spoken in Malawi, used in the story.

Walking for Water: How One Boy Stood Up for Gender Equality is set halfway around the world, but it definitely deserves a place in every Canadian library and classroom.

Tsiku labwino (tsi-koo la-BWI-no) “Have a good day” or “Good day.”