Nigerian houses swallowed by sand

Ciroma Mohammed is standing on the spot he says was once occupied by his house in north-east Nigeria. "We lose houses to the desert every year," he says from the village of Bulamadu in Yobe State.

Almost all the villagers in this dusty arid region say they have lost homes and farms to the Sahara Desert which is expanding southwards.

"What we do is that when the sand moves and buries our homes and farms and even our wells, we simply keep retreating southwards," says Aminu Mahmud, another villager who says he has already lost two different houses to the sand.

He says the situation deteriorates every April when strong pre-rainy season sandstorms sweep sand into their settlements.

"The desert's unrelenting onslaught is pushing us further away from our original homes and it seems there's absolutely nothing we can do about it," Mr Mahmud says.

"The desert has swallowed up our houses, our farms, our roads, our lives. It has changed our livelihoods."

A middle-aged Muslim woman who did not want her photograph taken says women in Bulamadu now spend most of the day travelling long distances in search of potable water.

"Water has become more precious than gold now," the woman who introduced herself as Mairo said, as she sat frying bean cakes known as kosai.

"You wake up one morning and the water well that was there yesterday has been buried under the sand. As a result, most of us women have to trek long distances to get water.">

from the BBC