Tiptoeing through the floodwater in the slums of Monrovia, Liberia, photographer Kieran Doherty spotted a flash of pink. The young girl in a T-shirt and matching umbrella was hard to miss: after a two-day deluge, the slums – home to more than a million people in a city built for around 200,000 – had taken on a grey hue, the overcast sky reflected in the water.
Floods here are not just an inconvenience: the lack of proper sanitation means rudimentary latrines overflow, spilling their contents on to the streets. In this alley, Doherty – on assignment in the country for Oxfam, documenting living conditions in the slums – was stepping through raw sewage that lapped at his shins.
This girl, even though she was wading through filthy water, still took care to shield the rest of herself from the spitting rain. And she was aware of the style statement she was making. "She was holding the umbrella with such poise, like a proper young lady," Doherty says. He had just seconds to take two pictures as she stopped, turned and briefly posed.
Liberia, one of the world's poorest countries, is still struggling to rebuild itself after two brutal civil wars. With nearly a fifth of all deaths caused by waterborne diseases such as cholera, the need for better sanitation, particularly in the overcrowded slums of the capital, is huge. Unless they're lucky enough to live near a river or have a septic tank, people usually use buckets emptied into the street, or just the streets themselves.
Oxfam is trialling household toilets that break down waste organically, and more quickly, than tanks – essentially, compost loos. Sadly, Monrovia is just one of the many cities worldwide filled with slums barely fit for human habitation. Yet humanity, as captured by Doherty, still thrives.