: *WE SHALL PREVAIL*

Great. Let's continue - *WE SHALL PREVAIL - Part 2 (The Return)* The rain that year saved lives, but it did not solve everything. When the harvest came, it was just enough. Pa Jacob stored three bags in the small barn. Mama measured food with a small cup, so it would last till next planting. But the village had changed. When Emeka and Tunde returned from Lagos, they came with new ideas and new troubles. Emeka came with a small radio that never stopped talking. Tunde came with a debt - a man in Lagos had given him money for transport and now wanted double back. And the borehole was still dry. The rain filled the small ponds, but ponds dry quickly. Amara was now seen as a leader, even though she was only 17. The younger girls followed her. The elders started to call her to meetings, which had never happened for a woman so young in Iro. One afternoon, a white Hilux entered the village. It was the Local Government Chairman. He had not come in three years. He came with a photographer. "My people," he announced, "We have heard of your resilience. We shall prevail, isn't it? That is why government has brought you 10 bags of rice." The photographer took pictures. The Chairman gave a speech about how he loves Iro. Then he left, with 8 of the 10 bags still in his car. "For logistics," his assistant said. That night, Amara could not sleep again. The anger she felt was hotter than the hunger she felt before. She went to Pa Jacob. "Papa, we cannot wait for rain. And we cannot wait for government. We must make our own water." Pa Jacob laughed, a tired laugh. "Amara, how? Will you dig with your hands to the bottom of the earth?" "No. We will dig together. All of us." The next day was market day in the next village, Ugep. Amara walked there with two chickens - their last two. She sold them and bought a used book from a secondary school student. The book title was _Introductory Agriculture and Water Conservation_. She could not understand everything in the book. The English was big. But there were diagrams. Diagrams of how to make a simple dam with sandbags and clay. How to make contour ridges to trap rain. How to dig a well that does not collapse. She brought the book to the village square and opened it. "Listen," she said to the women and the young men who had returned. "This book says if we dig small trenches across our farms, the rain will not run away. It will stay in the soil." Emeka scoffed. "Amara, you want us to do manual labour from a textbook? In Lagos, there are machines for this." "In Lagos, you were sleeping under bridge," Tunde shot back. They almost fought. Amara stood between them. "Yes, it is manual labour. Because we have only our hands. But these hands are what we have. We shall prevail with what we have, not what we don't have." So they started. Every morning for a month, before the sun became too hot, 20 young people - boys and girls - went to the farms with hoes. They dug. Not deep wells, but long, winding trenches along the slope of the land, just like in the book's picture. They packed the edges with stones. The elders said they were spoiling the land. The children said they were playing. Then the second rain came. It was not as heavy as the first. But this time, something different happened. In the farms where they had dug trenches, the water did not run off and disappear. It sat. It sank. Slowly, slowly into the soil. Where there was water sitting for days, the soil stayed dark and soft. Pa Jacob knelt and touched it. He brought a handful to his nose. "This soil is alive again," he whispered. That season, their millet yield was double the previous year. Not because of more rain, but because they kept the rain they had. The news spread. People from Ugep came to see "the trenches of Iro." An NGO worker from Calabar came too, a young woman named Grace. She saw what Amara had done with a second-hand book and 20 hoes. She offered to help them dig a real borehole - a deep one, with a solar pump. But she had a condition. "You must maintain it yourselves. And your girls must stay in school. No early marriage." Amara agreed instantly. But Pa Jacob hesitated. "Our tradition..." "Papa," Amara said, "Our tradition is to survive. And we are surviving by changing." The borehole project took 6 months. It was hard. The drilling machine broke down twice. The NGO ran out of funds once. Tunde's debtor from Lagos came to Iro to cause trouble and threatened to take Tunde away. Again, it felt like everything would fail. Bayo, now a little stronger, asked his sister one night, "Will we prevail again?" Amara was tired. She wanted to say no. Her hands were full of blisters. But she looked at her brother and said the only thing she knew. "We must." On the day the water finally gushed out - clean, cold, endless water - the whole village did not just sing. They wept. Old women who had walked 5 kilometers every day for 30 years to fetch water just stood under the flow and let it pour on their heads. Amara stood a little away, watching. Grace the NGO worker came to meet her. "You know, Amara," Grace said, "You could get a scholarship. Go to school in Calabar. Become an agric officer." Amara looked at the water, at her mother filling buckets and laughing, at Bayo splashing other children. "I will go," she said. "But I will come back. Because prevailing is not leaving. Prevailing is staying and making it better." That was the second time Iro prevailed. --- *End of Part 2