ABSTRACT
Fatimatou, 8 years old, is the youngest of four children in a family living in the impoverished neighbourhood of Boh Dida on the eastern fringes of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. Her mother, Leile, came to Nouakchott in 1986, following the great Sahelian drought, menacing the entire south-eastern region and decimating her family's herds dramatically. Having lived as nomadic pastoralists, the transition to sedentary life on the outskirts of the capital was challenging in many ways. There is hardly any water or sanitation infrastructure in the entire neighbourhood. Fatimatou explains how what bothers her most is the wind, which makes everything full of dust and which is cold at night and makes her cough all the time. Nevertheless, Fatimatou likes living in the city because she can go to school but she loves it when they, once in a while, take time to visit family members who still live in the badiyya (desert).
