Photo of the Day 206

Women Carrying Firewood, Sudan, 2003

Photograph by Randy Olson

Women carry bundles of firewood on their heads in the Sudanese desert. In rural African cultures, the responsibility of foraging for firewood usually falls to the women. In Sudan's brutally dry desert, where little vegetation grows, it can take several hours each day to collect enough wood to cook with.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Shattered Sudan: Drilling for Oil, Hoping for Peace," February 2003, National Geographic magazine)