Heading out from Old Dongola, Sudan we drove for hours across the desert…

…Until arriving at a small town near the Nile (as all towns in Sudan are). The “town” consisted of just a few homes, but Ramadan, our guide and driver, knew one of the families and so we stopped for a visit:

The leader of the family was this girl of 19 (I don’t know what happened to the parents):

I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but every aspect of her demeanor left me with the impression that she harbored a profound loneliness: