The Swollen River

After several days of hard riding through arid desert, we reached the village of Lucca on the banks of a mighty river. The river was swollen by floodwaters and we were unable to cross. We were faced with a lengthy wait for the waters to subside.

The children armed themselves with crossbows and kept watch in case Leo's in-laws found us.

A kindly villager granted us the use of his basement in a straw hut close to the swollen river. His daughter warned us not to swim without washing our feet first. She wasn't interested in marriage.

Each day we sent the children into the water to check the current, and each day they nearly drowned, declaring it way too strong to attempt a crossing.

This caused many anxious moments for us, particularly when their heads went under water. We advised them not to drown, and they actually listened.

After several days with no change to the water level, we grew curious as to where such a vast amount of water was coming from and thought about having a look around.

The country in and around Lucca is flat, with mountains in the distance from where the water flows. The villagers appeared to be dabbling in basic agriculture, an advancement on the hunter-gatherer existence of the savages we met in the south.

They had even attempted to build a basic water distribution system – an aquaduct. While it looked impressive, it was either incomplete or didn't work because many of the villagers still gathered water by hand from public taps.

As teachers, we offered our superior troubleshooting skills to look into the problem. An extensive Ishikawa analysis uncovered the root cause – someone had built a motorway through the middle of the aquaduct. They thanked us warmly when we pointed this out, and gesticulated wildly at the farmer who built the motorway.