Like other farmers in the area, Zongo works the dry soil to grow millet, sorghum, peanuts, and beans. Rains are seasonal and often sparse, the land has been overworked, and the soil is degraded. With every new generation of sons, however, the farm plots are divided into smaller and smaller units. They spend half the year in Ouagadougou doing odd jobs. Maybe my children could all have gone to school.
Food production remains a problem.
Chronic drought has brought the desert ever closer. But the government has begun to provide the village with a better strain of millet capable of surviving on less rainfall. Zongo hopes the villagers' yields of millet and sorghum will improve. He is optimistic about the future. We will do our part.