A Fulani girl stands in the doorway of a straw hut in the small village of Bele Kwara in southwestern Niger . The Fulani people are primarily nomadic pastoralists who crisscross across the West African Sahel, leading their cattle, sheep, and goats in search of water and rich grazing grounds in a yearly cycle that has continued for centuries. In the past years, though, a large percentage of Fulani people have adopted a more sedentary lifestyle. While still holding onto their pastoralist roots, some families have also built permanent villages and begun to farm swaying fields of millet, sorghum, and corn...Bele Kwara is a tiny village of only about 100 people some 70 kilometers southwest of Niger's capital, Niamey. In the late 1990s, the village of Bele Kwara was home to only 40 people. Now, in 2007, it has grown to 100, as the family pastoralists have come back home to settle. Rather than living in a hut made of sheets of weaved grass that could easily be moved from one place to another in the pastoralist tradition, this girl lives in a permanent mud brick hut with a straw roof.