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Languages of Water is a work of fusion cutting across countries. This hybrid work of collaboration crosses poems, stories, and essays that pour forth like water. Each work is deliberately woven to show language as water in the way it flows. Poetry just like fiction and essays flow, being streams of consciousness and unconsciousness. The genius of this book is shown in its diversity. We know water to exist as liquid, solid, also in a gaseous state, and so do the works that appear here, they are fluid, not stationary. And so we read these works as they drop like water, it rushes like a flood and flow like a stream. Each work of art is focused on water, mostly the scarcity of it and how that affects the rest of the plot, driving characters to take desperate action in search of it.

The first story talks of water as a thing that can be written, something you can find on pages. The writers go further to explain that “To Write Water”, one must first have an invite, it must come in as a drip. The drips increase in frequency and volume and soon enough there is a pool. After this, the writers talk of how poems can take the form of water and ooze and evaporate, a pulsing thing that carries words. This short arresting work of art is concluded by saying the things one does when one writes water.

The next story serves as a backdrop for all that follows next. “When The Water Stops”. Earth has had an abundance of water and is said to have 71% of its surface covered with water. This abundance leads to a recklessness borne out of the false belief that we will never run out of water. But what happens when it does? We read of the course of action supposed futuristic humans would take; recourse to drinking blood. Eugen Bacon explains the amount of water in a human body as a means to interpret the behaviour of those people. Moreover, this story, splintered in many parts tells different things but still says the same thing, this thing that we think is impossible will happen and all that will be left is nostalgia for how things once were.

The following stories and poems intimately tell of what happens when there is no water. Each story is focused on water, mostly the scarcity of it and how that affects the rest of the plot, driving characters to take desperate action in search of it. The desperation leads to killing other humans to source for the liquid in their bodies and for some, it is a sacrifice they are willing to make.

In spite of the suffering, the theme of class comes into play. The rich will always find a way to make their lives better and leave the poor with miserly options. The rich have the opportunity to have the pick of whatever liquid is sourced while the rest of the population has to make do with a remnant that is often the worst liquid available. But to the poor, liquid is liquid.

Another theme that shines through is privilege. For some people in certain parts of the world, they don’t have to think or make calculations before they flush the toilet. It is something they are used to. Something they can do mindlessly because it’s something they have been conditioned to use. However, there are some parts of the world that have to perform gymnastics to get not just drinking water but toilet water as well. They have no access to water and some even die from it.

The desperation for survival, the trickery of it all. Humans are generally driven by what they desire, and they can do anything to get what they want. In The Handsome Fox, although the characters in this story are foxes, we see that this is to remind us of the characteristic sly way of the fox, we see that humans will do anything to survive. Pretend for a while because they have an end goal. Desperation pushes them to be imaginative and that imagination breeds cruelty.

However, soon enough, a discovery is made. We know why the water has stopped.

“…even though water had always comprised 70% of the Earth, only one percent was ever fresh and usable”

There is an abundance of water, but that abundance is a hoax. Just one percent out of that abundance is usable and no one had thought of refining the unusable part. The one percent was used till it became exhausted and then, there became a search for a solution.

The next story appears to be an intermission of some sort. A little girl prays for water. The result is a drop of bird poop on her, but she doesn’t see it, she thinks it’s liquid so it’s water. The old man with her who is her friend leads her into a shelter from the “rain”. Who knows, maybe a storm will set in.

“All that greed!

Yes, I needed to stay in the water as long as I could”

As we progress, there is so much more water, and the abalone hunting woman is tempted to stay just one minute longer every minute and in time she is drowning. These women are called haenyeos. They are divers and sometimes for them, it is as though they try to tempt fate by staying a moment longer than necessary in the water. There is a greediness of some sort to stay longer, hold their breath for a minute longer. A greediness for more than they can hold in.

In “Black Queen”, water is likened to a woman.

“GRANDFATHER told us that the River Omambalu was a woman, unfathomable and un-predictable like most women are. And, just like every scorned woman, her grudge was deep and her spite, deadly.”

This story goes to show the strength of water. How water is much stronger than the African Rock Python, a snake remarkable for how tightly it grips a person or thing when it lays hold on them. As powerful as this snake is, the water is more powerful.

Water is linked to womanhood because hell hath no fury than a woman scorned. When the body of water in this story Black Queen is scorned, she uses her might, all of it to get her revenge. Every time a thing is dumped into the water, refuse, plastic, cans amongst other items, the water takes it in grudgingly, and eventually, when it is full, it spills forth its content.

The entire subject matter the book surrounds is futuristic climate fiction. The world as it is today is undergoing climate change as a result of many of man’s activities. What will happen in the next ten or fifteen or twenty years if we do not do something about this? A lack of rain or an overabundance of rain? How would this affect us?

After these stories, there is an interaction with the writers starting with Eugen Bacon on her story, “When the Water Stops”. Through this interaction, we are made to understand the politics of the writer, the writer’s understanding and thought process, seeing the story from the eyes of the writer. It makes stories not easily grasped to be broken down in tiny bits, a transformation of some sort from water to vapour.

“…the author is the text’s very first reader. But that same author is unable to contain their creation.”

When this part is written down, it makes the reader understand that though they may have understood what was written, it may not be the original intention of the writer. A writer could write and interpret just one thing, but the reader takes something else. One more time, language as water appears as we know that water appears in a shape but the form we take it in depends on the tools we have. Also, art begets art. Through the concluding pages of this book, we could see art flow into another art, just like water. We see authors paying homage to other authors who inspired the thought process that birthed this book and also that birthed the title of this book.

The writers in this book are diverse and from different cultures but their stories blend and merge as water flowing from a tributary flow into another body of water and they keep on joining each other till they find a general body to mix into, in this case, a book. This affects the style in this book as it subtly changes from writer to writer. While some narrate the incidents as stories leading us one step after the other, some others leave us with gaps that fill up as they complete their work. There is however a fluidity in all of the works that binds them seamlessly to one another. This story exists because this other one has laid the foundation for it, this is what has to come next.

The Omniscient point of view is the common technique used by the writers in this book. They write like they know the genesis of everything, and it is because they do.

In conclusion, this book shows us the language water speaks. It tells us the things we should watch out for and the likely repercussions if we don’t do them. This collection not only tells us the fragile nature of our environment, it also tells the enduring power of art and how one art can lead to the creation of another. It’s a never-ending cycle, like the water cycle. That is to say, art is water.