Tabi Fall, Senegal - "The rainy season was bad and we don't have anything to eat here anymore," said Cheikh Ngone Fall, head of a village in western Senegal where the drought is pushing young men and women to move.
"There are 55 houses in this village. In each one of them, five to six youngsters have recently left for (the Senegalese capital) Dakar or Mbour (a fishing town in the west) because of the food troubles," Fall, who heads to village Tabi Fall in the west African nation, said.
"We didn't harvest anything last year. If we had a well we could have grown things during the dry season and nobody would have left," the seventy-something chief said in his house made of zinc and straw.
He looked at the cracked earth in his courtyard, the effect of the ongoing drought that had caused harvests to fail because there was not enough rain.
In Senegal most of the agriculture depends on rain and only a minute part of arable land is irrigated.
The poor west African nation has been hit hard by the rising food prices and the astronomical petrol prices.
In Tabi Fall, in the savanna zone, the countryside is arid. You can see the bones protruding from the skin of the cattle, goats and sheep scrounging in the dry bushes.
"There is no cattle feed. We let them roam free in the bushes," Moussa Ndoye of the neighbouring village of Merine Dakhar said.
The villagers themselves also make do with less.
"We have learned to skip breakfast. The children we sometimes give 5 CFA francs (0,007 euros, one US cent) to buy candy," Fatou Gueye said.
"Lunch is basic, three times a week it's millet porridge with baobab fruit, without milk or sugar. Rice at 300 francs CFA a kilo, is expensive," she explained.
In the nearby village of Ndiass, Modou Diop, said that he planted millet and groundnuts three times last year.
"But I didn't harvest anything because of the lack of rain," he lamented.
"We were forced to cut our daily intake in half. We are not eating enough," Khadim Diop said.
"The price of rice is very high and often there is no millet," he added.
"For breakfast we sometimes only have cafe Touba (a home brewed spiced coffee) when there is not enough bread," said Mbouba Diop, in the village Ndiaye Damba Niane, three kilometers down the road.
In Merine Dakhar in the Ndoye family home, the women spooned only sauce into a bowl after running out of rice.
"Sometimes we have the money but there is no rice for us to buy," Moussa Ndoye said.
Still, according to the sous-prefect of the community of Merine-Dakhar, Cheikh Modou Wade, there is no famine.
"We have food troubles. Three meals a day are no longer the norm but there is no famine here," he said.
The Senegalese authorities have said they will send 3.48 kilos (7.66 pounds) of rice for everyone of the over 26 000 inhabitants of the region.
Birima Diop, an old man from the Ndiass village, is not counting on the government.
"We give praise to Seringe Touba (founder of the Mourides Muslim brotherhood, a very influential movement in Senegal). Prayers are what will save us," he insisted.