OULED ESSI MASSEOUD, MOROCCO — 

Mohamed gave up farming because of successive droughts that have hit his previously fertile but isolated village in Morocco and because he just couldn't bear it any longer.

"To see villagers rush to public fountains in the morning or to a neighbor to get water makes you want to cry," the man in his 60s said.

"The water shortage is making us suffer," he told AFP in Ouled Essi Masseoud village, around 140 kilometers from the country's economic capital Casablanca.

But it is not just his village that is suffering — all of the North African country has been hit.

No longer having access to potable running water, the villagers of Ouled Essi Masseoud rely solely on sporadic supplies in public fountains and from private wells.