Maybe my children could all have gone to school. Zongo Adulsallam has lived his entire 68 years as a subsistence farmer in Kokologo, one of thousands of villages in Burkina Faso. Kokologo is in the middle of Burkina Faso's farm belt, about 60 kilometers west of the country's capital, Ouagadougou. Even in a good year the harvests produce only enough to feed the people of the village for barely half the year. 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.