Almost every afternoon in the Dworzak neighborhood of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Yebu Bare hikes up a steep hillside to fill a 5-gallon bucket with water that spills from a crack in a giant cement cistern. The spindly 12-year-old carefully puts the bucket on her head, then treks down the winding dirt path home.

Her mother, Isate Bare, says their family needs five buckets of this water a day for bathing, washing dishes and cleaning. Isate, Yebu and her siblings take turns hauling it.