"My name is Anusibuno and I am seven years old. I live in a village called Zuo, in northern Ghana. I live with my mother and father and four sisters in rooms which are built within a circular wall."

"The walls and roofs of our rooms are made of mud and wood, and the floors are made of beaten gravel. The whole enclosed area is called a compound. Our part of the compound has five rooms: my father’s room, a kitchen area, the grinding-stone room, and two others which we use for storage, sleeping, and living rooms."

"I usually wake up around 5.30am. As soon as I’m awake, I start on the things I do every morning: I sweep our part of the compound, fetch water from the borehole with my sisters, then I might help my mother to prepare breakfast."

"We often have pumpuka for breakfast, it’s a sort of porridge made of roughly-ground millet. I help to serve the pumpuka into bowls and then my sisters, mother, and I sit down outside to eat it."

"Then I go to wash in the water we have collected from the pump. I dry myself and rub shea butter on my skin to protect it from the sun and wind."

"Once I’ve washed, I put on my dress and walk to school. I haven’t got a school uniform: not many of the children at my school have."

"I started school two years ago and now I’m in Class P2. My sisters, Alenye and Awensina, are here too. There are ten children in my class, but we also have to share the classroom with the younger children.

"Mary-Jo is our teacher, she’s very nice. I like doing maths best of all, and I enjoy the singing and dancing we learn at school."

"I play with my sisters and other relatives and friends who live in the compound. We like playing hopscotch. We also make toys from clay and put them in the sun to dry."

Anusibuno and her family also appear in Wake Up, World! - a book for young children to be published in September by Frances Lincoln, in association with Oxfam GB.

Photos for Oxfam GB by Penny Tweedie

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