The girls of the community walked to water together—
what began as necessity became the bond
of friendships built on the path and in the waiting,
the specific solidarity of the weight,
the measuring of each other’s burdens.
Who was stronger today, who needed rest,
and the walking became the daily test.
It was the circuitry of the community,
the calculus that survives in unguarded hours,
in the conversation the task allows,
the unhurried talk that happens
when the body is occupied with the walk.
The borehole came in the fourth year,
replacing the spring.
They welcomed it.
They mourned it.
That is the complexity of development—
what you gain in time
you lose in the social texture of the daily climb.
The girls still walk to the borehole and back.
The path is shorter. The load is lighter.
But the walking is still the walking,
still the space where the community holds
the specific grace of knowing each other
in the motion of the daily.
I don’t say development is wrong.
I say the social life of the walk
deserves its own redress,
its own consideration in the planning and the after—
the conversation, the sharing, the laughter
that development misses.