The Calabash of Water

It was the year of the great drought. The rivers had gone to bone. The cattle dragged their ribs across the cracked earth. The wells in every village had given up their last muddy cup. People were beginning to die.

A man named Sani was making a hard journey from his home village to the far market town where, it was rumoured, food still remained. He had set out with two waterskins and a calabash. The waterskins had emptied days ago. Only the calabash was left, half-full, and he had been rationing it sip by sip.

At midday he sat under the only tree in many hours of walking and held the calabash on his knees. He could feel the water sloshing softly. He knew that if he drank steadily he might just reach the river at the other side of the wilderness before he died.

While he was sitting, three travellers came toward him along the road.

The first was an old woman, walking with a stick. Her lips were grey. She greeted him in the formal way: "Sannu da zuwa."

Sani returned the greeting. The old woman lowered herself to the ground beside him. She did not ask. He could see her hand shaking.

He lifted the calabash and tilted it gently against her lips. She drank twice. She closed her eyes. Then she opened them and said only, "May your road be long, my son."

While she was resting, a young father came up the path, carrying a small boy on his back. The child's eyes were sunken. The father could barely walk. They sank down in the shade.

Sani lifted the calabash again. He let the small boy drink first. The child gulped. The father drank afterward, slow tears running into his beard.

When they had rested and gone on their way, the third traveller arrived. He was a beggar — barefoot, lean, with the wild eyes of a man who had walked too long. He sat down without greeting and said hoarsely, "Water. I beg you."

Sani looked at the calabash. There were perhaps three swallows left. The wilderness ahead was wide. He thought of his wife. He thought of his children waiting for him to come home with food. He thought of the long road still in front of him.

Then he lifted the calabash and let the beggar finish it.

The beggar drank, breathed, closed his eyes, and was silent for a moment. Then he opened his eyes and looked into Sani's face very carefully, as if seeing him for the first time.

"You are alone on this road, brother," he said. "Why did you give me the last of your water?"

Sani shrugged. "Because you asked," he said. "What else is the water for?"

The beggar stood up. He was not stooped anymore. His back was straight. His eyes were calm and deep, and Sani felt himself looked through.

"My friend," said the stranger, "I am not who you think I am. Stand up. Walk one hour to the west of this road. Where you see two thorn trees joined at the trunk, dig in the ground between them. You will find what your village needs. Tell no one but your own elders. Go in peace."

When Sani looked up, the road was empty.

He walked west. He found the joined thorn trees. He knelt down and scraped at the dry earth between them. His fingers struck wet sand. He dug deeper, with his cutlass, with his hands, with the calabash itself. And before the sun went down, water — clean, cold, plentiful water — was rising into the hole.

Sani drank. He filled his waterskins. He covered the place carefully with branches and rocks and walked back the long way to his village.

Within a week, the elders of his village had reopened the spring. Within a month, three neighbouring villages had walked to it for water. Within a year, the children of the whole region had named it Rijiyar Sani — Sani's well — and it has never gone dry in any drought since.

They say the beggar was an angel, or perhaps an ancestor, or perhaps simply a thirsty man whom God had been watching to see how Sani would treat. Whatever he was, the lesson was the same: the calabash you pour for a stranger is the well you dig for your own children.