As a child in Burkina Faso, Yacouba was sent away from home to study the Qur’an, where he and his classmates were almost starving. The young boys would trek across miles of wilderness, only to fall and beg at a straw hut for meagre rations. It is from this harsh background that the young farmer became determined to develop techniques that would bring exhausted soil back into production. His efforts have outdone the work of the world’s leading scientists and technological advances costing millions of pounds. They may also yet prove crucial to the future of the world’s rapidly growing population and global food demands.

The desert can be a lonely place for the people who live there or for those who are traveling through. It is also the teller of different stories including the story of a traveling salesman whose only commodity is death and the story of a young man who finds that the death that he wishes for is difficult to find. Others are just traveling through, on their way to another place when they stop to eat at Red’s Desert Oasis. The food may not be great, and the waitress may be surly, but those who stopped at Red’s will find that they are involved in the showdown of their life.