Although it cools down a bit towards the end of the year, the temperature in Mali can rise above 40°C (104°F). The humid rainy season is June to September, but they only get this in the south.

In the middle part of the country – the semi-desert part called the Sahel – rainfall can vary. In the north there is very little. Winds blowing off the desert between

December and February – known as harmattan – cover the cities with a fine layer of dust.

Sometimes it seems as if the weather and land are trying to bury Mali under a tonne of sand. Two thirds of the country is now desert or semi-desert. In the recent past, there has been terrible drought and famine. The growing desert is a great worry to people in Mali as once-fertile farmland disappears.