The boy's black foot, resting in its rubber flip-flop, is streaked white with the dust that sifts everywhere. Dark leather patches are fastened at the girl's knees to protect them from their daylong journey over burning sand. The sky is a white sheet of flame. No, it is the Sahel, the edge of the desert, its fringe. There are struggling millet fields outside Zinder as there are across all of southern Niger and on into Burkina Faso and Mali.
Farmers turn the soil, such as it is, with iron-pronged hoes.
They watch the sky. They save the best seed from any harvest for next year's planting. This is not a country of sand dunes and scree. Not far from Niamey, giraffes skim at dawn to the banks of the River Niger, where fishermen are already casting their nets. That is, if it is not a season of drought, if the riverbed has not dried and cracked open, casting up bones and bits of stone and root.