Virginia Sibanda worries that her 17-year-old daughter will be forced to elope with one of the well-off local men or one of the many gold-panners that have descended on the nearby Runde River in Zimbabwe’s parched Mwenezi district.
Ravaged by drought and dry spells over the past few years – a situation compounded by the loose soil, sand, and clay washed into the waterways by the panners – Mwenezi, in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province, is one of the poorest villages in Zimbabwe, where a total of 1.5 million are facing hunger according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).