Three out of four East Africans live in rural areas. For them, water is a necessity, but increasingly scarce.
Finding water that is both abundant and drinkable is often a daily chore, especially for herders tending to their flocks.
Increasingly intense and frequent bouts of extreme weather due to climate change have made finding clean water sources all the more difficult.
Depending on the season, harsh droughts can strip land of its moisture for months, while floods can easily wash away homes and crops.
For many in East Africa, water is one’s livelihood. Villages along rivers or on the coast of Lake Victoria depend on fishing for food and money. But environmental degradation and overfishing have led to problems for them as well.
I took these photographs while reporting in Uganda and Kenya.
Nick Trombola is a journalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of News-Decoder partner Indiana University, he has interned with Bloom Magazine in Bloomington, Indiana, and spent time reporting in sub-Saharan Africa, first as an intern for The Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala, Uganda, and most recently as a freelancer in Nairobi, Kenya.