In December 1935, empty petrol cans formed a line at a communal fountain in Asmara, Eritrea. The photograph's original caption explains that the fountain supplied domestic water and that the cans marked the waiting order.
This was a queue in which containers held places instead of people standing continuously. While the colonial city served as an Italian military supply base for the invasion of Ethiopia, residents still carried household water from a village fountain.
The central figures in this line are not faces but reused fuel cans. Placing containers in advance allowed waiting to coexist with other work, yet it also documented a city in which domestic water still had to be collected from a shared tap.
Quality check: The 1935 Asmara photographic record shows empty containers arranged in water-collection order at a communal fountain, with place, period, and purpose identified.