Looking for change

摘要

The Brazilian sertao is inhospitable at the best of times. Now in its third straight year of drought, the semi-arid scrubland wedged between the northeastern coast and the Amazon rainforest to the west verges on desolate. Maria Rai-munda da Silva, a 49-year-old sertaneja who lives with her mother and three sons near Serrinha, a town of 77,000 in the state of Bahia, recalls carrying water in a bucket from a muddy pond, half a mile down a dirt track. She would go early to scoop up the clean liquid near the surface, "before the animals came and stirred it up".