The people and the timeline: Songs of Dust and Water Companion

The people

The novel has a large cast, and it changes completely between the two parts. Part One belongs to Madina, a village in the dry north of Awdagha, and to the ministries in Bakoro that decide its fate. Part Two moves ten years on and six hundred kilometres south, to Nafawol on a dead floodplain in Tekuru, and to the villages, officials and companies around it. Only a handful of people cross from one part to the other.

The entries below say who each person is when we first meet them and what they want. What they do later stays folded away until you have read that far. Each folded part names its chapter, and you can open one on its own.

Part One: Madina

Talib. A weaver’s son who would rather be anywhere but at the loom. He has finished the village school, reads Nabari and French and gets by in English, but the family’s money went on his sister’s training. He has taught himself circuits from a rain-soaked radio diagram and sells carved ironwood birds to lorry drivers. He wants to understand machines, and he wants to get Hawa through her exams. He signs on as a day labourer when the Glass House arrives and sends his first week’s pay south for her fee. He works his way up from the broom to Apprentice Technician. With what Adam and Aisha have taught him, he finds where the plant’s money is going. When Adam dismisses what he finds, and then orders a safety bypass that the manual forbids, Talib is there for the fire. Afterwards he goes back to his father’s loom. In Part Two he works as a pump mechanic for the district. Repeating Adam’s idea of the plant: “Nothing gets in. Nothing stops.” (ch3) His line to Adam at the ruin: “I showed you, and you said noise. You lied to me.” (ch8)
Ibrahim. Talib’s father, a weaver with a bad back, who stopped singing at the loom when his wife died. He wants his son’s hands on the work and asks very little else. He does not ask where Talib’s new wages come from, only states it: “You are working for them” (ch2). After the fire he brings water and sits beside his son until dark, and later he hums again, an old song from the naming ceremony, as the two looms work together. In Part Two he sings at the loom again, and dies in Year 14. His first words in the book: “A weaver’s craft is in his hands.” (ch1)
Hawa. Talib’s sister, a student nurse in Bakoro and the first in the family to go past the village school. We meet her through her letters, which are careful, practical and short. In the first, her exam fee is unpaid. She wants to qualify and to stop being a weight on her family. On the night the city’s power fails she delivers a baby by torchlight. She tells her brother not to carry what is not his. In Part Two she runs a maternity ward and the students call her Major. From her first letter: “The city eats money.” (ch1)
Malik. The village blacksmith, who has kept Madina’s one tractor alive through two civil wars by re-forging parts other men would scrap. When a certified bracket snaps on the second day, he forges the two pieces back into one; the contractor will not use it, and offers him a shovel instead. Malik wants to be allowed to mend what belongs to the village. He hangs the refused bracket on a nail by his forge and goes on working. To Talib’s talk of the future he says the plant’s hum “has no rhythm” and is “just noise” (ch3). His remark to his apprentice, in Nabari, without lowering his voice: “A thing you are not allowed to mend is not yours,” he said. “Remember that when it breaks.” (ch2)
Mustapha. Elder Mustapha is the Ministry’s registered signatory for Madina, chosen because he can write to a ministry in three languages. His robes are spotless and he smiles at whoever is speaking. He wants things smoothed over: a daughter is to marry after the rains, his eldest son owes money in the city, and his roof leaks. He signs the land agreement with Adam’s pen while the grazing-line dispute is still open. He takes an envelope from Nabil, Minister Dunia’s right hand. After the fire the village turns on him. At the signing: “My signature is all that is required.” (ch2)

Part One: Bakoro and the state

Aisha. An engineer sent to Madina by Minister Khresay to “Be my eyes” (ch2), after a ministry transferred her for reporting that a contractor was using salty sand in the concrete. She is exact and courteous and does not give way. She wants the plant to work in Madina’s conditions, and proposes a cheap filter of sisal and charcoal that Adam tests and calls “inconclusive”. When the plant starts to fail she begins an exercise book and writes down everything, including that leaving the smith’s bracket in the dust “without learning the smith’s name” was wrong. After the fire she turns down Minister Dunia’s offer to make her Director, Rural Energy, and asks instead to look after a neglected borehole. Her reply to Adam’s laboratory figures: “With respect, your lab data is wrong.” (ch3)
Khresay. Minister of Rural Hydraulics, a Sarahule who speaks of Wagadu and talks in proverbs made of things: granaries, buckets, ropes and goats. He has seen foreign projects leave behind “rusting hulks and unread manuals” (ch1), and wants this one to put roots down. He signs the letter of intent with a warning and sends Aisha to watch. He loses the plant to the Ministry of Energy. When Adam comes to him at night with his evidence, he explains why it will not help. He is kinder to Aisha, and finds her the post she asks for. His warning at the first meeting: “Your glass house is beautiful. But glass… glass breaks.” (ch1)
Balla. Khresay’s griot, a thin man who sits on a low stool with his hands folded and remembers every word spoken in the room. He speaks seldom, and only to set something in the record. After the fire he tells the story of Wagadu’s fall as two accounts of “the same sentence, told by different people” (ch8), and when Aisha sends Dunia’s letter back, he carries it out of the room himself. His judgement on Adam’s plan: “A system with no roots, Minister… is a house built for the wind.” (ch1)
Dunia. Minister of Energy, polished in English and Nabari, born in the north in a place smaller than Madina. She wants a national grid and a result to show on National Unity Day, and she believes the state, however poor, must be the one that builds. After a blackout in the capital she takes the Madina plant into the National Energy Fund and steers Adam to the payment clauses of an amendment he does not read to the end. She buys through firms her brother’s bank holds the accounts for. After the fire she blames “foreign hands” on state television, then offers Aisha the north. Her answer to Khresay’s proverbs: “I deal in outcomes, Mr Sterling. In equity.” (ch4)

Part One: Proxima

Adam Sterling. A systems engineer and the face of the Proxima Fund. The text never gives his race or nationality. In Part One he believes in sealed, certified systems run by data, and he wants a plant so good the village never has to think about it. He refuses Malik’s bracket. He signs the amendment. He robs one intake to keep another running, tells Talib his evidence is noise and orders the bypass. The plant burns and his hands are burned. He is sent home. In Part Two he comes back to Nafawol as the man who holds Proxima’s money, speaking careful Nabari, and the village calls him the Tubab. We see him there only from outside: he waits, says little, carries baskets the way the boys show him. He admits his old mistake once, in front of the committee, and before he leaves he tells Kadiatou about the weaver’s son at Madina. His promise in Bakoro: “Nobody in Madina will ever need to touch it.” (ch1) His introduction at Nafawol: “I was an engineer. Now I carry the money, and I answer for how it is spent.” (ch10)
Mark. Adam’s director at Proxima. He sends the message that calls Adam home. In the bridge he reads Adam’s one-page statement to Proxima’s board. He rewrites the staff’s motion into a single rule: no money for any project unless the people who will live with it own it and can stop it. When a banker asks what the village paid, he answers: “We didn’t ask them.” (bridge)

Part One: other people

Name	Who they are
Samba	A farmer and elder whose millet stands knee-high. At the meeting he asks Adam, in slow English, “whose land are you paying for?” (ch2)
Yero	Head of the Magribe clan; after the fire he jabs his herding stick at Mustapha
Hamadi	Head of the rival Mashrik clan, twenty years younger than Yero; he backs Dunia The new survey favours his clan’s line.
The old woman of the Mashrik	Holds her dead husband’s share of the grazing line, where the plant is staked
Neneh	A mother whose eldest son works in Bakoro; after the fire, “You sold us ash!” (ch7)
The kora player	Old griot from the next village, paid in millet for four songs at a naming ceremony
Ebou	Minister of Finance, Dunia’s colleague of twenty years
Nabil	Deputy Administrator of the National Energy Fund, Dunia’s right hand
Yusuf Dunia	Dunia’s brother, a banker
The Major	Senior midwife at Bakoro General, Hawa’s teacher

Part Two: Nafawol

Kadiatou. The Yaara-Jaxo, or Water-Keeper, of Nafawol: a title handed down through the women of her line. In Year 1 she has drawn from the village well every morning for sixty years, and the well has been going bitter for six. Her granddaughter Mariam is sick from it. She wants clean water for the children, and she wants the village to keep the key to whatever brings it. She asks who will hold the padlock on the new machine. She names the Guardians and the Festival of First Trees and faces a minister with plain answers. She refuses a neighbour’s request for a charter and later says so in public. When a company makes an offer, she walks from village to village with one line about a gate key. Her first words to Adam: “Words are wind, Tubab.” (ch10) To Fatou on the walk home: “A well has no gate.” (ch10)
Fatou. A trader who has hired other men’s lorries for thirty years, and Kadiatou’s friend for forty. She thinks in prices, risk and terms, and does not believe kind words from anyone who owns the only lorry on the road. She wants the trade to run on Nafawol’s own road and its own honest scales. At the reading of Proxima’s agreement she takes the paper, reads every clause aloud in Nabari, and is given the key, which she keeps in her purse with her coins. She keeps the ledger, demands the road, proposes the trust that becomes the Coffer Fund, faces the minister, and puts her own mistakes on the public wall. When the company comes, she wants the offer but will not argue for a contract she has not read. Her verdict on Adam’s first meeting: “That’s yes with its sandals still on.” (ch10) To the agreement: “Give it here.” (ch11)
Isatou. Head of the women’s kafo and keeper of its osusu, the savings pot that goes round on market days. She runs the cooking at every funeral and naming ceremony and knows how many bowls each one takes. She wants the women’s work counted. She arrives at the committee with a list of the millet, oil and hours that fed the road crews. She is literal and hard on her own family. She refuses her son’s wife a turn out of order even though the roof leaks. Her questions often end the argument. When a minister threatens the fund, she gives the village its strategy: “Then put everything where the whole country can see it.” (ch17) Her question to the company’s offer: “Into whose hand?” (ch24)
Dr Arramata. Proxima’s environmental and systems engineer, born in Nafawol, who carried water from its well before she could read. She has measured the floodplain for eleven years and spent four asking funders for money. She has a husband who teaches mathematics in Port Walada and two daughters who “think I am married to a field” (ch11). She wants the village’s water fixed in a way the village owns, and she chose Adam to carry the money because he had already failed in public. She tests the water, maps the soil and sinks the deep borehole. Each Friday she writes the depth to the water on the wall, and over the years the figure creeps downwards. When the company comes she stays out on the stone lines on purpose. Her reason for choosing Adam: “He’s been wrong already.” (ch11) On the harvester’s limits: “We stop asking it to. We plan around it.” (ch16)
Mamadou. Nafawol’s senior elder, a herder by background who leans on his stick and speaks in proverbs of cattle and goats. He is sceptical by habit and asks short, dry questions. He wants rules strong enough to hold even him. He makes Fatou read the agreement’s key clauses again. He asks for the fund’s three-signature rule to bind him too, so that the rule, and not he, will say no when his grandson wants a motorbike, and he walks three times to the herders’ camp to settle where the cattle will cross. He finds the compromise that builds the mill. On Proxima keeping a second key for ten years: “In ten years a heifer is a grandmother.” (ch11) On the fund: “Then build it so that it does not need me to be honest.” (ch16)
Ousman. An elder who has grown groundnuts on the light ground all his life, and the loudest doubter of the new methods. He mocks the cover crops and the drip lines and agrees to let the soil decide between his way and Dr Arramata’s. He wants respect for what the village already knows. His eldest son, an accountant at the port, stands “a little further from the fire” (ch19) each time he comes home. When his field loses, he concedes in Sarahule and asks to be taught. Later he carves an ironwood bird for the academy. He speaks for Nafawol at the Union Council. His terms for the contest: “If you want the land to judge, let it judge.” (ch12) His concession, said to Dr Arramata alone: “The water is yours. The soil is ours. Do not confuse them.” (ch12)
Hassan. A young man who does the welding at the smith’s, “who learns fast and knows it”. He reads the engineer’s drawings for the road crews. He wants to build systems and be good at them, and has to learn to listen first. He spots a supplier’s overcharge in an invoice. He becomes one of the academy’s first students. Sent to lead the work at Sirawol, he sits with the elders of every family before he moves a machine. He drafts the rule that gives young people their own vote in the Union. By Year 15 he teaches at the new university. His lesson at Sirawol: “The machine’s the easy part,” he said. “It was the easy part at home too.” (ch20)
Bintu. A student of the academy, “who reads what others skim”. She notices what Hassan moves past too quickly. She wants to make something of her own. After a lightning strike she is the one who says “Wait” and finds the damaged part. In the evenings she takes the harvester’s worn-out filters apart to see how they failed and tells nobody why. She reads the company’s contract down to the appendices. She makes a clay water purifier any village can build, and names it after Kadiatou: “A filter needs a name people already trust.” (ch26)
Mariam. Kadiatou’s granddaughter. In Year 1 she is a sick child whose fever frightens her grandmother, and she pulls a face at her first cup of clean water because she has forgotten that water can taste of nothing. At thirteen, in Bintu’s class, she chalks a column of the ledger and notices something odd about one man’s payments. She wants to study beyond the village, and tells her grandmother so. Her question in class: “Why does the carter always stop just under the line?” (ch21) A lean year costs her a place, and she goes south a year later.
Halima. Kadiatou’s great-granddaughter, daughter of Mariam’s elder sister Jainaba. She is a baby on her mother’s back at the founding of the academy, where Kadiatou presses the last seed into her palm. At four she insists on holding the well rope and believes she has hauled the bucket up alone. By Year 15 she is twelve and reads the Union’s news on a tablet. On a photograph of a far-off village’s accounts: “They copied our ledger,” (ch28)
Lamin. Mamadou’s grandson, quick with figures and quick at everything. As a boy he wants a motorbike and works out at once how many goats he would have to sell for one. His sum: “Six Tobaskis. Five, if the price keeps climbing.” (ch16) He grows up to be the quickest clerk the fund has trained, and for a year he stays latest and is thanked least. Mariam’s question in class exposes small payments he has been making, and he works off the debt on the road crews.
Demba. A young road-builder who grew up in the hunger years and treats every new stretch of road as a blow struck back. He wants to protect what the village has built. After the sabotage he turns up with his father’s machete, and has to learn to protect the village without the knife. As a Guardian he keeps watch above the quarry with Fanta. On the rise, about the machete: “It isn’t a knife. It was my father’s.” (ch15) Later he marries her. When the money is argued over, he asks his father: “Whose road is it then?” (ch24)
Edrisa. Nafawol’s best builder, a man of very few words. He wants things built true and built fast. He splits the road crews into teams and sets the crown of the road with Kadiatou’s well rope when his cord is too short. His answer when the road is proposed: “Then we build it.” (ch13) He leads the Guardians under the radio call sign Baobab. His rule for the night watch: “Two at each… Nobody alone.” (ch15) In Sirawol he loses patience with “old quarrels” (ch20). When the fund cannot pay him he goes to the coast to build hotels, and leaves his string on the pegs for when he gets back.
Alkalo Sankung. The head of Nafawol, mild and formal, who has written to the capital about the well “every year since it turned” and had only short replies. He signs Proxima’s agreement for the village, as alkalos do, and hands the key to Fatou. After the sabotage, when tempers turn towards Sirawol, he closes the meeting: “Nobody names a village tonight,” (ch14). By Year 7 he is too old for the long councils.

Part Two: Nafawol, other people

Name	Who they are
Bakary	A master weaver; saves the first demonstration with wet jute, lays the culvert walls the old way, and weaves Fanta’s bride cloth
Fanta	A young weaver, the first girl Bakary let sit at a loom; a Guardian, call sign Hornbill; she marries Demba
Haja	An old widow who will not open her pay envelope in public; she lends half her osusu turn to Sirawol’s women
Alie	Senior technician, who can hear what is wrong with a machine before any gauge shows it
Nyma	Runs the mill’s press line, trains the Sirawol crews and keeps her log through a long shutdown
Jainaba	Mariam’s elder sister, Halima’s mother
Mariam’s mother and father	Kadiatou’s eldest daughter, and the husband she brought to live in her father’s compound
Kadiatou’s son	Works the docks at Port Walada and sends money when he can
Lamin’s mother	Silent towards Kadiatou’s household for a year; brings a bowl of meat at Tobaski all the same
Dawda	A small boy who makes a salt tester from clay, wire and a salvaged sensor
The Teranu	A family of nine by the east channel, who borrowed for bullocks in the good years

Part Two: the other villages

Name	Who they are
Alkalo Musa	Head of Sirawol, Nafawol’s nearest neighbour; proud and wounded. He is the first to come asking to be taught, and he confesses who wrecked the culvert.
The herd boy	A Sirawol boy of “Twelve or thirteen” (ch15) who breaks his arm running from the Guardians; years later he dances at Demba’s wedding
The head of Sirawol’s women’s kafo	Has cooked beside Isatou at funerals for thirty years; borrows from her pot for onion seed
Alkalo Yaya	Head of Kumbawol, a rice village; Musa’s joking cousin; wants the surplus spent on water and a seed store
Old Jankero	An old man of Kumbawol; he asks Kadiatou “how far away the hospital would be” (ch24)
Aminatu	A young leader from Talawol; she brings her mill’s daybook to the Union Council
The young fitter of Talawol	Trained at the academy; asks Hassan what a man with his hands could earn at the port

Part Two: Port Walada, the state and the market

Minister Sulayman. Minister of Rural Development of Tekuru, nine years in office, which in Tekuru is a long time. He fears that a village able to build a road without his district officers does not need them, and he wants the village fund under his control. Three days after Koriteh he arrives in a white grand boubou, greets the alkalo properly, declines to eat, and orders the fund’s signatories to Port Walada to sign it over. When the fund is re-registered under the banking law, his order cannot stand. To Kadiatou at the Ministry: “The air, Madam Kadiatou, does not belong to Nafawol alone.” (ch17) When a Sirawol boiler is sealed, Fatou lays it at his door. His ministry’s only answer to the Union is a letter saying that the Republic knows of no place called Senebia.

Name	Who they are
The lawyer from Port Walada	Young, trained to write for judges; cuts the charter from thirty pages to twelve and stops wearing a tie
The regulator’s inspector	A woman in her fifties with twenty-two years of inspecting banks; arrives on the weekly bus and finds two mistakes
The industrial-safety inspector	Young and sorry; seals a boiler for want of one certificate. “He was sorry. He sealed it anyway.” (ch20)
The buyer’s agent	Has driven a truck with scales in the back to the floodplain villages for fifteen years; knows Fatou’s mother by name and once brought her children sweets
The supplier	Fatou’s trading partner of twenty years; overcharges for the press line
The seyfo	The district chief, who walks the land for the shelter trees with Sankung and settles the damage when a herd breaks into the cotton

Part Two: Proxima and TransGlobal

Adam Sterling returns as Proxima’s man in the field (see Part One above).
Evelyn Reed. A businesswoman with TransGlobal Agriculture who arrives in a white SUV knowing the village’s story “down to the names of its milestones” (ch23). She wants the first right to buy everything the Union grows, and offers two billion dollars across the region and fifty thousand dollars for every Union family. She names the village’s weak points out loud: the harvester’s shortfall and the end of Proxima’s money in three years. Her case: “Anyone can copy the charter on your academy wall. Nobody else can deliver your crop.” (ch23) She dines with Adam, the only person there who has lost a project like this, and when a dangerous clause is found in her contract she strikes it out within two days.

Name	Who they are
Proxima’s board (bridge)	Hears its own three-hundred-page inquiry and passes the ownership rule, “though not by many”
Proxima’s board (ch22)	Eleven members meeting by video, among them banks, trusts and a food and logistics group
The man in the good suit	Speaks for the logistics group and proposes that Proxima hold the rights to the village’s model
The retired schoolteacher	Gave Proxima her savings and now sits on its board for the small donors

Timeline

Hidden until you have read the whole book, including the vote and the ending.

Part One carries no dates. Part Two runs by numbered years from the harvester’s arrival, and each section begins with a year line in italics. The bridge links the two: “Seven years after the fire at Madina, and three years before she brought the harvester to Nafawol, Dr Arramata flew north”, so Year 1 falls ten years after the fire. The tables below keep to what the chapters say, and they cover the whole story, so save them until you have finished.

Part One: Madina

Year	Season	What happens	Chapter
—	The hungry time, after three bad seasons	Ibrahim and Talib at the looms; Hawa’s exam fee is due. In Bakoro, Adam pitches the plant and Khresay signs the letter of intent	1
—	A naming ceremony, then the convoy	The convoy arrives and Aisha comes on the weekly bus. On the second day the bracket snaps and Malik mends it; the next day the elders meet and Mustapha signs. Talib is hired	2
—	The lighting, and six months of light	The lights come on “on a Thursday, an hour after sunset”. The plant runs for six months, Ramadan among them. Talib becomes Apprentice Technician; Aisha’s filter is tried for a week and removed	3
—	One night and three days	A blackout in Bakoro; Hawa delivers by torchlight. The next morning Dunia decides to take the plant; the day after, Nabil visits Mustapha; the next day Dunia comes to Madina and Adam signs the amendment	4
—	The weeks after the Minister’s visit	Wages come late and short. Parts cannot be ordered; fake gaskets arrive; one intake is stripped to keep another running	5
—	The weeks after, then “Two weeks later”	Talib traces the vendor records and shows Adam. Two weeks later, in record heat “a week before Tobaski”, the west intake is bypassed and the plant burns	6
—	The three days after the fire	The fires go cold; Dunia returns with soldiers and cameras; Adam is taken away	7
—	The next days, and the following week	Aisha is offered a post by Dunia. The hearing finds Adam responsible; he goes to Khresay, then to Madina, then home. The next week Aisha takes Dunia’s letter to Khresay	8
—	“Six months later”, the harmattan	Investors visit the ruin; a biofuel plant is promised. Aisha leaves on the night bus. Talib reties the broken warp thread	9

The bridge

Year	Season	What happens	Chapter
—	Ten years after the fire, looking back	In the second year after the fire, Proxima’s board hears its inquiry and passes the ownership rule. The Madina site is cleared in the third year. In the seventh, Dr Arramata meets Adam at Proxima’s review desk; after another year of rewriting, her proposal is accepted and she asks for him	Bridge

Part Two: Nafawol

Year	Season	What happens	Chapter
Year 1	Height of the Dry Season	Adam and Dr Arramata come to the meeting under the baobab	10
Year 1	The Following Day	The demonstration harvester overheats and is saved with wet jute; the first clean water. Nine days later Fatou reads the agreement aloud and the key is handed over	11
Year 1	Rains to Harvest	The permanent harvester and the deep borehole; the taps open. The soil contest with Ousman, a dry spell, the cotton harvest and the first accounting	12
Year 2	After the Harvest	A loaded lorry sinks on the track; the village builds its own road, the Road of Hands. Isatou brings her list	13
Year 2	The Harmattan	Nearly two kilometres built. Sand is found in the pump; the buyer’s agent asks about the road; the culvert is wrecked	14
Year 2	The Next Day	The Guardians are formed and surprise saboteurs at the quarry, who escape. A Sirawol herd boy breaks his arm	15
Year 3	Planting Season	The harvester settles at a little under seventy per cent; the stone lines, the shelter belt and the Festival of First Trees. The charter is written and the Coffer Fund named. Proxima’s papers go on the wall	16
Year 3	Koriteh	Minister Sulayman arrives three days after the feast and orders the fund handed over. The fund is re-registered; the regulator’s inspector finds two mistakes	17
Year 4	After the Third Harvest	The mill is debated, built and opened; the supplier’s overcharge; the argument over the osusu. A short scene in Madina, six hundred kilometres north	18
Year 4	The Rains	The House of Knowledge, the village academy, is founded; Halima receives the last seed. A lightning strike; Dawda’s salt tester	19
Year 5	Sirawol	Sirawol’s alkalo comes at last and the old injuries are written down. The fund’s first loan to another village; Hassan leads the work there	20
Year 5	After Sirawol	Sirawol’s boiler is sealed for want of a certificate. A loan falls due; Edrisa goes to the coast; Isatou’s pot lends to Sirawol’s women. Kadiatou owns her mistake about the charter	20
Year 6	The Rains	Edrisa returns. Mariam finds the carter’s payments. Twelve villages sign a common charter and found the Senebian Economic Union	21
Year 7	The Wrestling Season	The Union’s first surplus is split six to the fields, four to the workshops. Demba marries Fanta. The kafo’s cooking fires go cold. Proxima’s board votes on owning the model	22
Year 7	The Trade Season	Evelyn Reed brings TransGlobal’s offer to the Union Council	23
Year 7	The Following Weeks	The villages argue; Isatou asks her question; Bintu finds a clause in the contract’s appendix	24
Year 7	The Day of the Stones	The vote. Two evenings later the news reaches Madina by radio	25
Year 8	The Trade Season	The world cotton price falls below the cost of growing; no surplus. The Teranu family leave for the coast	26
Year 8	The Hot Season	The borehole falls every Friday; the taps are rationed	26
Year 9	The Harmattan	Old Jankero dies in Kumbawol; the academy sends students south again	26
Year 10	The Rains	The channel runs for the first time. Adam’s contract ends; the key and the patents are handed over, and a feast is held	26
Year 11	Madina	Talib and Aisha repair a borehole pump; Ibrahim sings at the loom	27
Year 12	Bakoro	Talib sells cloth in the capital; Hawa’s night on the maternity ward	27
Year 13	No chapter of its own	Told later: Hassan hands the technical lead to Bintu; trains begin running north across the border	28
Year 14	Madina	Mourning in the weaver’s house; Talib takes his notebook to the village committee	27
Year 15	An Ordinary Day	Nafawol fourteen years on; visitors arrive by train from across the border	28

The short Coda, about Wagadu, carries no date.

Ages and spans the text states

Person or thing	What the text says	Chapter
Adam	Twenty-eight at the pitch, in Reed’s words years later	24
Talib	“A man in his forties” in Year 15	28
Aisha	Eight years in a ministry before Madina; “past fifty” in Year 11; “near sixty” in Year 15	6, 27, 28
Kadiatou	Sixty years of mornings at the well in Year 1; Bintu says her name “has carried water for seventy years” in Year 10	10, 26
Kadiatou and Fatou	Friends for forty years in Year 1	10
Fatou	Thirty years hiring other men’s lorries in Year 1	10
Mariam	A sick child in Year 1; thirteen in Year 6	10, 21
Halima	A baby on her mother’s back in Year 4; four in Year 7; too small to lift the bucket in the Year 8 hot season; seven in Year 10; twelve in Year 15	19, 24, 26, 28
The herd boy	“Twelve or thirteen” in Year 2; grown tall by Year 7	15, 22
Dr Arramata	Eleven years measuring the floodplain, four years asking funders, by Year 1	10
The well	Going bitter “for six years” before anyone from outside acted	Bridge
Kadiatou’s son	On the docks since four years before Year 1	10
Isatou	Forty years of cooking oil on her hands by Year 2; the osusu twenty years old in Year 3	13, 16
Sulayman	Minister for nine years in Year 3	17
Mustapha	Signatory for fifteen years	4
Proxima’s second key	Kept for ten years, from Year 1	11
The rail line	Dead for forty years; running north “For two years now” in Year 15	28
The whole of Part Two	“Fourteen years after the Tubab first arrived” in Year 15	28