Staple foods include sorghum, millet, rice, maize, peanuts, potatoes, beans, yams and okra. Meat is a luxury in the villages, but eggs and fish - from the local rivers and reservoirs - are an important source of protein. Salad vegetables and strawberries grown in market gardens are commonly available in the towns.

Sauces are a mainstay of the Burkinabè diet - for example 'riz gras' is rice mixed with vegetable sauce, meat, and oil and 'sauce gombo' is a sticky okra-based stew. Sauces are usually served with tô (a stiff white porridge made of millet, sorghum or maize flour) or rice, and eaten with the right hand. In Bissa tô is known as wu, and in Mooré it is called sagabo. Specialities include brochettes (meat cooked on a skewer) and chicken dishes. In rural areas bush rat is considered a delicacy.

Néré seeds are used to flavour the sauces that accompany every meal of tô or rice. Néré trees are never cleared from farming land because their black seeds are a vital part of every meal. The seeds are fermented and shaped into balls, called soumbala or Maggi Africain (African stock-cubes). When a landowner leases a plot of land to another farmer, the rights of the tree crops go to the tenant. But if there are néré trees on the land the owner will always keep the rights to the crop.

Water is the most common drink, but dôlo, a home-brewed millet beer, and bissap, a reddish drink made with bissap (hibiscus) flowers are also popular in towns. Zoomkoom is a popular soft drink, made from millet flour and water flavoured with ginger and lemon and generously sweetened. (In Moore 'zoom' means ‘flour’ and 'koom' is water.)

The 'Children of the Rice' live in the wettest region of Burkina Faso in the Vallée du Kou close to the border with Mali. Along the River Kou, 1300 hectares of the broad valley bottom have been turned into rice fields. Small-holdings have been allocated to local families and to poor farmers who have migrated from the dry-lands of the Sahel in the North of the country.

Each of the families has one hectare, broken up into small paddyfields by a grid of earth dykes. Families either take turns to use the mechanical cultivator or plough with oxen. The rice-planting scheme has been running since the early 1970s and is supported by the Chinese and Burkina Faso governments.

"Our parents came here 28 years ago, when the scheme started," explains Ramata Ouédraogo, aged 24. "We were born here, and everything we know is rice. We’re called moui kamba - the children of the rice. We have students at grammar school and university but most of the children aren’t interested in school.

"The water is always there, throughout the year. We control it, starting and stopping it when we need to. The water’s always there for us. We work every day on the rice, except on Sunday. We’re friends and we work together. The work is hard; there’s no difficulty in sleeping after a day in the rice fields. We sell part of our crop and keep part for ourselves. "