SOUTH AFRICA: Continental Divide
Getting to work is a scary daily business for Simon, because the train that picks him up in Soweto is often boarded by machete- and gun-wielding thugs. But he has no alternative.

ETHIOPIA: Constant Struggle
With few resources, the Getus depend heavily on cow dung. Every morning Zenebu collects fresh dung from the corral and mixes it with straw into a paste. Some of it is used to plaster the walls of the house and the rest is used for fuel.

CHINA: One-Fifth of Humanity
The Wu family is most frightened that their fish will be stolen. That is why at harvest time, they take turns sleeping by the water.

VIETNAM: Communist Free Market
The Nguyen family has no means of waste disposal because they throw nothing away.

UZBEKISTAN: Legacy of Lenin
A common Uzbek version of polo - one horseman drapes a sheep over his pony, and his friends try to remove it.

ARGENTINA: Stability - At a Price
Every night, Juan Carlos loads his gun to protect his family against the city's increasingly aggressive thieves. Unwilling to leave a loaded weapon in a houseful of children, he empties it every morning before going to work.

BRAZIL: Southern Superpower?
Sao Paulo is so huge and its transit system so dysfunctional that two-thirds of its people own cars. Sebasiao and Maria scrimp and save to pay for their vehicle, and said that they even knew people who go without eating to pay for their cars.

MEXICO: Vaulting into the Middle Class
At the time Columbus sailed, the Americas had about as many inhabitants as Europe. Most of them were in Mexico; with its 2 million people, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan may have been the biggest city in the world. The arrival of the Spaniards brought diseases, which wiped out over 90% of the people.

HAITI: Tragedy Upon Tragedy
Shy and slow to learn, 14-year old FiFi, has been chosen by her parents as the child who will stay home from school to help them. As a result, she pounds grain, fetches water from the well, and scours the dishes with sand while her siblings attend classes and pore through their tattered textbooks.

ICELAND: Fire and Ice
Iceland meets almost all of its energy needs by tapping the heat of its 200 volcanoes and the flow of the rivers on their slopes. Partly as a result, its people enjoy one of the world's highest standards of living while breathing some of its cleanest air.

ALBANIA: Out of Isolation
Time has another meaning here for the Cakoni Family. The kids spend 3 hours a day going back and forth to school. One son takes 40 minutes a day to get water with the donkey. And the family must walk 4 hours every two weeks to the nearest market.

BOSNIA: Siege Mentality
Under the constant threat of gunfire, the Demirovic household struggles to keep some semblance of its former middle-class existence. Imprisoned in his home by snipers, Lokman, a retired neurosurgeon, now spends his days listening to the radio and making emergency fuel from trash.

IRAQ: Postwar Blues
Prayer five times a day order life for Skaimaa, as it has all her life.

KUWAIT: Oil Rich, Worker Poor
Today foreign "guest workers," which are mostly servants, outnumber Kuwaitis by 3 to 1.