From sun-scorched fields of crops to the corrugated iron shacks of a sprawling shanty town, there is no escaping the heat for migrant labourers in southern Italy's Puglia region. The smell of roasting goat and burning rubbish fill the air in the settlement, which spreads out between the disused runways of a former military airfield.
After hours of back-breaking work in the middle of a heatwave gripping Europe, the fruit pickers cycle back to Borgo Mezzanone, where there is no natural shade, no drinking water and no sanitary facilities.
"It is very difficult, very hot, we cannot sleep at night," Florence Ekhatoro, a 47-year-old from Nigeria, told AFP. Despite the heat, she is preparing to light a fire under a grill on her doorstep to cook fish and meat pasties to sell.
Ekhatoro is one of the luckier inhabitants, managing to snap up a small brick shanty when she moved here nine years ago. A fan whirrs noisily below the pictures of saints hung on the walls. Six plastic water containers sit inside the front door. Filling them is an arduous task, especially when violent summer storms turn the dirt tracks to mud.
Residents use a shopping trolley to haul containers back and forth from two water tanks provided by local authorities, then boil the water for drinking or washing. "It's hard... some people go to work, come back, and go to sleep without washing," said Mamadou Sarafou Diallo, a 40-year-old from Guinea. - 'Inhumane living conditions' - The shanty town on the outskirts of Foggia has existed since 2005 and swells to an estimated 4,000 people in peak summer months, when seasonal workers come to pick melons, apricots and cherries.
