Hovels fashioned from red mud bricks, corrugated metal and waste material perch precariously on a bluff in Luanda’s shanty town of Boa Vista. Located just below Miramar, a district of embassies and million-dollar villas, the neighbourhood sits amid mountains of uncollected trash.

When it rains, the rubbish mixes with water and sewage and settles in black, stagnant pools. This was one of the first areas of Luanda to be hit by an outbreak of cholera, which has killed more than 2,000 Angolans since February.