Macha stays silent. He has not said anything since our departure.

By one o’clock, the sun is indeed hammering our heads, and the landscape glares like an overexposed photograph. My water bottle is empty. The others, incredibly, have just one small water bottle between them.

“Diallo, is there a pump ahead?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Not far,” says Diallo. When a Fulani man says “not far”, prepare for a long walk.

We pass a cluster of small domes made from millet-stalk mats — a Fulani settlement. Diallo and Boureima go over to one of the huts and return with two millet dumplings (nyiiri), sharing them out between us as we walk. I feel absurdly grateful, but my mouth is so dry I cannot swallow.

At three o’clock, we come to a pump; a wide-eyed Mossi woman fills up my bottle for me. The spout of the pump gushes clear, cool water, and I gush at my benefactor every Sahelian blessing I know. May God reward. May God protect. May God give peace. May God grant us to drink the water of al Jannah (paradise). I have interrupted the woman in the act of watering her goat, so I bless the goat, too. My goodwill knows no bounds.

The sun is lower in the sky now, but it has taken its toll on all of us. “See that,” says Diallo, pointing at Wuune, a pretty beige-coloured cow stumbling along at the back of the herd. “She is crying.”

I assume Diallo is talking metaphorically until I see the tears with my own eyes. The weeping cow is a curiously heart-wrenching sight.

“She came to Djibo all the way from Diinanguru, in Mali. No rest for the past three days, and not much grass.”

“Are we nearly there?” I ask, voicing the question I imagine is uppermost in Wuune’s mind.

“Not far now,” sings Diallo, and my heart sinks.

“We will sleep tonight,” says Idrissa, smiling up at me. “There is an enclosure of thorns at Gachinde where we will keep the cows until morning.”

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