Rosalinda did not want to leave the mountains of Peru. She loved her home with the tin walls that chattered in the wind. She was born in this valley shaped like a bowl. She did not want to move to the city and leave behind her Abuela Jacinta and her aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t her fault the thin mists that swept across the ridges never quite gathered into rain anymore.
Once, the trees and plants that carpeted the slopes had caught the mists, but those were gone. Every year, it grew drier and rockier and lonelier and hungrier. Mama did not have enough water for her garden. Without that, what would they eat? No tomatoes. No squash. No corn.
Her father had decided that the family would go to the city to find work. If her father, mother, and brother found jobs, they could earn enough to send some money back to help the rest of the family. Rosalinda’s mother promised that she would like her new school in the city – the classrooms even had microscopes and chemistry sets. She knew Rosalinda loved science.
“I like Abuela’s science lessons,” Rosalinda stated.
“Bah,” her grandmother answered, “you’re getting too smart for me. If you go to the city schools, maybe one day, you’ll be an inventor and make new things.”
But Rosalinda could see sorrow in Abuela Jacinta’s old face. Her grandmother hugged her close. Rosalinda felt a tear hit her dark brown hair.
If only the rain would fall instead of tears, she thought.
She ran outside. The misty clouds slid past in a whispering hush, tickling her skin, and refusing to fall in drops.
If only we could catch them, Rosalinda wished.
If only they could round up the clouds like sheep. Or cast a net like the fishermen do in the sea. Rosalinda spread her fingers wide and tried to imagine fishing for moisture. It would have to be a net as fine as a cloth and as big as a hillside. Maybe they could wring the water out of it like the laundry they washed in the metal bucket.
Unless, Rosalinda mused, her imagination racing, the nets were made of metal or something slippery. Then it would drip down like water off the roof.
Every morning, before the sun burned the mists away, the tin roof of the house collected a sheen of moisture. It pooled on the edges of the rippled metal then dripped down. Her mother grew herbs underneath the overhang. The smelly goats always tried to eat them. Rosalinda had to chase them away twenty times a day. One time, she’d tried to put up a tarp to fence them out, but her favorite goat had licked the moisture, nibbled the plastic, choked and nearly died.
Rosalinda’s eyes widened. Plastic would work! It would catch the mist, then the water would drip down from its sleek surface. She couldn’t use a tarp – the wind would blow it away. She needed a net of plastic. What could she use?
Aha! Rosalinda had an idea. Tio Roberto had a whole heap of old bags bundled behind his house. She dashed between the houses to ask if she could use them. He gave them to her, gladly. What else was he going to do with them?
Rosalinda had seen her grandmother, mother, and aunts weaving. She had learned the basics. She cut the bags apart, then started to weave the little strips into a stronger net.
“What are you doing?” her abuela asked.
Rosalinda explained, her head tilted to the side in concentration as she worked.
“I am going to fish for mist.”
Her brother overheard and told her she was crazy, but her grandmother was smart and inventive. She sat down on an overturned bucket and listened carefully to Rosalinda’s idea.
“Where will the water go when it drips off the net?” Abuela Jacinta asked her.
“Into a gutter then into a barrel then into a hose that we can move around the garden,” Rosalinda answered.
Her grandmother sent Rosalinda’s brother to go find a section of gutter. She sent her sister to get a length of hose. Shemade Rosalinda’s father roll over a big barrel. She asked all of Rosalinda’s aunties to help weave the net of strong plastic.
“Rosalinda,” her abuela explained, “has an idea. We must build a net big enough to catch a whale, but fine enough to sift water from the air like a sieve.”
After days of work – and a fair amount of grumbling from the family – they had done it. The massive net stood upright at the top of the dry hill, billowing in the wind. No one thought it would work, but as the thick mists slipped through, the woven strands beaded with moisture. Gravity pulled the droplets downward. They dripped into the gutter, ran down its length, and trickled into the barrel like a tiny stream. Everybody cheered.
With water, they could plant their corn and squash and potatoes and tomatoes. With the garden, they could feed their families. With food, they did not have to move to the city.
“It’s un milagro, a miracle!” her mother cried.
“No, Mama,” Rosalinda corrected. “It is science, an invention.”
“A miracle and science,” her abuela said. “It’s both.”
Rosalinda’s cloud catchers fed her family. They turned dry, dusty slopes green again, not just with gardens, but with wild plants, too. When the bushes and trees grew taller, they caught the moisture from the air in their broad leaves. When Rosalinda grew older, the story of her cloud catchers won her a scholarship to university. She studied engineering, but her abuela told everyone she was getting her degree in two subjects:
Miracles and science.
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Behind the Story
This story is fiction. Rosalinda did not invent the fog nets … but someone did and they really work. In the high mountains of Peru, there are cloud catchers just like the one Rosalinda builds with her family. Huge, plastic netting is hung on the ridges to siphon the moisture from the air. It is channeled into buckets and a hose is used to water the garden. As the plants return to the dry slopes, their fronds and leaves begin to do the same thing as the nets. The process is called “reverse desertification” and it helps to restore an ecosystem. You can watch a video about this here.
In Rosalinda’s story, it is important to collect the water so the family can grow their own food. If they don’t, they have to move to the city to earn money and support their family. Rosalinda and her parents would become climate migrants – people who leave their homes because the environment can no longer support human habitation. In 2017, there were 18 million climate migrants – and that number is growing each year. From droughts to forest fires to unbearable heat to floods and rising sea levels, the rapid changes in the climate due to human impacts are forcing people to flee their homes.
Rosalinda’s story has many parallels throughout the world. One movie, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, tells the true story of a Malawian youth named William Kamkwamba who invented a way to pump water up from the ground with a windmill. In other places, youth inventors are coming up with low-cost solar energy designs, fuel-efficient stoves, machines that clean-up plastic from the oceans, and much more. Local people have smart ideas for solving our pressing concerns about the environment. Young people, especially, have a good reason to think of bright ideas for the future – it’s their future!
Other Stories:
The Boy Who Hated Fishing (Italy)
Faridah and the Tangled Knot (Yemen)
Dev and the Elephant War (India)
Nuru and the Little Park (Kenya)