"An Inside Look at Cuba’s Constant Struggle for Clean Water"

"Across the country, battling water scarcity requires a vast array of workers, from inspectors and fumigators to truck drivers and pipe layers."

"In one hand Manuel Reyes Estrada carried a form and a pencil, in the other a bucket filled with small fish and a plastic Bucanero beer cup. “It is like this,” he said. “We, the health brigade employees, are only allowed to write with pencils.” His superiors, he explained, use pens. In the afternoon, the superiors visit the houses where the health brigade employees have worked earlier in the day — “to check if we have done our work well.”

Manuel stopped for a second on the unpaved road in the Cuban city of Holguín to fill in the house numbers on his otherwise empty form. He swept the sweat away from his face.

Every day in towns across Cuba, a vast array of workers — from inspectors and fumigators to truck drivers and pipe layers — takes to the streets in a coordinated effort to provide clean water to their fellow citizens."

Photographs and Text by Sanne Derks for the New York Times February 15, 2021.

Source: NYTimes, 02/16/2021