The Water Woman: She Who Carries the Lost Names

In the drought-stricken village of Mungula, where the river has long fallen silent and secrets run deeper than water, a Nairobi journalist named Amani Njoroge is sent to cover what should be a straightforward story—one of survival, suffering, and climate. But when she arrives, nothing is as expected.

The villagers speak of a mysterious figure—Mama Maji, the Water Woman—who appears at dawn, singing to the dry earth and leaving jars of pure water no one can explain. They say the river remembers. That it holds the names of women who vanished, voices long silenced, and griefs too deep for the written word. Amani is a skeptic—logical, sharp, grounded in facts—but the village has a different rhythm. Here, memory breathes, the past speaks through dreams, and stories demand to be carried.

As Amani follows the trail of ancient songs, clay tablets, and a fearless orphan girl named Kito, she finds herself caught between reality and myth, the living and the forgotten. Her own name begins to shift. Her identity fractures. And she learns that to tell the story of Mungula is not just an act of journalism—it is a ritual of remembering. And remembrance is never without cost.

The Water Woman is a haunting, lyrical novel about ancestral memory, spiritual resilience, and the sacred power of naming the lost. Blending magical realism with African folklore and investigative mystery, it is a story of transformation—for a woman, a village, and the voices history tried to erase.