Diarrere, Senegal — Fatou Dione has three sheep. She was married at 18 years old. She lives in her family compound with her father-in-law and his two wives. Her daily routine: She wakes up early at 5-6am to pound millet, then goes to get water. Then cleans sheep pen, and feeds her animals. Then goes to the bush for firewood, takes three hours sometimes, carries the load back to her home on her head. Then starts lunch cooking and begins the couscous for dinner by threshing millet. Fetches more water to wash her children. She regrets not finishing school herself. If she finished school she would not stay here, she said, she would go out to work and get a salary. “Right now everybody prefers the city because life in the village is getting tougher and tougher each year,” she said. The rainy season no longer good, soil not fertile enough. “Everything depends on the rainy season,” she says. Her wish for her children is that they go to the city (Thies or Dakar) and get good jobs and support her in the condition she’s living in. She knows women work more than men but she doesn’t mind. She’s praying for all her children to leave the village. Through our translator: “It’s hard for a mother to wish her children away, but Fatou prays for it every day.” Pictures of her going to well: Fatou Dione walks in oven-hot wind churning with dust to fetch water for her husband and four children. It’s the dry season in her village of Diarrere in Senegal, and both water and food are running low. The rains are expected to begin next month. (Project # 21-1701-01)