All Images © Mustafah Abdulaziz

World Water Day has been observed on March 22 since 1993. Mustafeh Abdulaziz‘s “Water Is Gold” is a long-term project on the global issue of water. Abdulaziz’s first trip was to Sierra Leone where he documented one of its worst outbreaks of cholera.

Above: Freetown, Sierra Leone. Momoh, 33, collects plastic bottles from the polluted beach of Kroo Bay, a poor slum settlement of 5,500 people, November 2012.

Grey Bush slum of Freetown, Sierra Leone, November 2012.

Freetown, Kroo Bay slum, Sierra Leone, November 2012.

Workers from Gee Fresh, one of the Freetown’s main water bottling companies, sit in the back of a truck, December 2012.

In the Kroo Bay slum, where cholera struck hard, a boy washes in one of the two water points that services the approximate 5,500 inhabitants, November 2012.

A tourist from New Delhi floats in the clean water of River Number 2, a beach 16 kilometers south of Freetown, and typically populated by tourists and aid workers, November 2012.

To see more of this project, visit Ostkreuz: Agentur der Fotografen. Abdulaziz is an American photojournalist based in Berlin, Germany.