Monday, November 15, 2010

Home again

I got in last night around 9:30pm. The family was there to greet me but my luggage was not. Luckily there isn't anything that I absolutely need in that bag and they were able to confirm that it was still in Amsterdam and that it should arrive here sometime tonight.

The last few days over there were somewhat hectic because of the impending departure of three volunteers (myself included) and the upcoming celebration which effectively will shut down the project for five days or so. Those who remain there will be able to get all the data and records organized which will be very helpful.

Many things went very well during the last week. A few different groups visited our operation and they were very impressed with the work. Other groups were in the villages collecting blood lead data and doing other testing which is outside the scope of the remediation but very helpful in identifying what is going on with the lead in the villages.

The lead contamination in the villages is huge and off the scale of anything that has occurred here in the states with the exception of some superfund sites. The official numbers of deaths reported are likely low based on what we have heard in the villages. Many children have died and many are still sick. Kids in the villages have blood lead levels in excess of 100ug/dl which is way over any regulatory limit you will find in the states. So the damage has already been done to those kids. The work going on over there is to stop more damage from occuring.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this blog. I want to go back to be part of that work and part of that team. It wasn't scary at all, well except for the driving... The villagers were very friendly and helpful. The workers from the various groups in the country were all very talented. There is just no way to describe it all adequately. However, I came back with some Nigerian currency (naira) and as I was showing it to my family, I caught a whiff of the odor coming from the bills. Yep, I brought back the smell of Nigeria.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Time to go

It is my last night here. Those of us leaving tomorrow are up late packing and finishing up work so others can pick up where we left off. The talent of those over here is amazing each in their own way.

As midnight hit a few minutes ago I headed to bed, walked outside and finally was able to take a few moments to stargaze in complete darkness. It has been a great trip.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Office with a view

This has been one of my various offices for the past few weeks.  It is only another few days before my part in this ends. Until then I will keep enjoying this work as much as possible.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Setting up shop

There is a large village with significant contamination in a ten acre area just on the edge of the village. It is a wonderland as far as playgrounds go and it is also along a section of river which has been dammed so it serves as a wash area too. Unfortunately it is full of piles of dirt in excess of 30000ppm lead. Yesterday when we stopped by some men were making new mud bricks out of soil dug from this area and mixed with some of the sandy processed ore. Today I shot them with the XRF and got 14000ppm in the nrovks which are used to construct the compounds. Sort of hard to do remediation work when they are still bringing the ore into their houses.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

A better mouse trap

It is Sunday and we are all staying in the compound to work. There aren't enough computers for everyone so some of us are doing other things to help out whether shooting soil samples collected from the villages or looking over maps and trying to fine tune everything.

A boy in the village yesterday had some rodent traps and he sold me two for 10 naira. That is about 3 cents each. They are a piece ff wood with a rubber strip tied to one end and strings tied to the other with a small wood trigger. The rodent crawls through the loop, trips the trigger and the rubber strip strangles or breaks the neck of the rodent. It is pretty cool and we have them set up by the kitchen to catch a rat that has set up shop.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Give the kid the camera

If you want a different perspective on life in the village, find an older kid and teach them to use your  camera and let them carry it around for you for few hours.


 

 










Today was the final day for the XRF at this village for exterior areas. The pattern in many of today's areas was higher concentrations in the shade and near the entry ways. The kids today were walking, sitting, playing and wrestling in areas with 4000ppm lead and up to 180ppm mercury. We try to communicate to the fathers, mothers, and kids to stay out of areas with really high levels but it doesn't seem to help. They really have a hard time with the concept of lead contamination.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Passing the torch

We went out to the nice village this morning to finish up shooting interiors and to keep going on the exterior mapping. I worked with one of the new guys to orient him to the village and the upcoming remediation. We dove into things quickly and just worked for an hour or two. Then we regrouped and went at things from the perspective of what would be most useful to him now that he had an understanding of mapping, visual cues, and the progression of taking ore to gold. He picked things up very quickly and I think he will have no problem taking on this village as his baby to the end. I will drop in if he needs me to, but I don't expect that to be necessary.
I will head out to the far village again to map exteriors out there. We put together the village map and are ready to start shooting. We just have to wait for people to become available.
We did take a little time today to stop by the market. Talk about an assault on the senses...it was amazing. It is interesting the differences between a market in a small remote village and a large weekly market in a big village. I plan to go back to the small village market tomorrow.

Going back out

Took a day off from the field work yesterday and just relaxed and worked in our office/compound. It was nice to have a break and I got lots of busy stuff done.

As for the other hard core folks who didn't need a break (I think it is age related...) they were able to make a lot of progress on finishing up the mapping of the next village to start with remediation. We have a strong group of managers and supervisors on the two villages in active remediation so we are able to utilize those folks to get rolling on the next village which should start on Monday or Tuesday.

This next village is near one of the mine locations with high lead content and most of the compounds are over 5000ppm. One shot yesterday was 50000ppm. Remediation is expected to take five weeks.

The other two villages that are finishing up are tense but good. Things are changing as we go and many adjustments have ready been made so things are actually going quite smoothly.

With the three new arrivals yesterday we are up to twelve volunteers working over here. The compound is only set up for ten but we can expand.

I am feeling the end of the trip looming and am disappointed about that. That was one drawback to the quiet time yesterday so today will be back to the grind in a good way. Plus I get to "train" one of the new guys.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Scheduling

Over the past few days we have learned of a celebration coming up that will greatly impact our work schedule. From what we have heard, even the airport will be shut down. So I think I will be cutting my trip short by a few days.
As far as work that went on today, we trekked to some compounds that we thought were part of a larger village across the river but it turns out it is a tiny village with its own name. Two months ago they had 15 children under the age of three. They lost three kids to lead poisoning. Now some of the other kids are showing signs of being sick. We got the coordinates of that village and will send the information on to the right people.
It’s been a very long week and I am looking forward to an office day at the compound and maybe a nap.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Getting work done and having fun

We took the long trip to the far village again today. On the way there we had a clogged fuel filter so we stopped at the stream crossing to fix it. Yes, it would have been nice to not fix it near a stream but that concept is lost here. This particular stream is in that forested area I mentioned a couple days ago so it was nice to be stuck someplace so nice. We played around on the log bridge for a while.
Once we got to town we made a lot of progress on mapping the entire village including exterior areas. Clean soil placement is happening all around the perimeter. This village is so small (approx. 1300 people) that it will be relatively easy for the crews to move clean soil from the outside in. This village is in such a dry area compared to the last village that things have been going quite smoothly. There are three compounds on the other side of the river from the main village that we have yet to find a path for, so that is an unmet challenge still to be dealt with.
We had a surprise at the next village we are working at when we learned that the village we knew about was actually twice as large as originally thought. We have been driving though the old town section and thought it was small but there is a new town section on the other side of the fields which we have never seen before today. So just some more work to take care of...
After finishing what we could we headed back and had to clean out the fuel filter again... When we got back we headed up to the tailor to pick up an item I ordered. The local village is quite large and busy, but we are learning the layout.

Waiting for tomorrow to come.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Finally a dry place

We spent the day traveling to the same village as yesterday and it seemed not as bumpy although the bumper fell off and the radiator cap fell into the engine compartment. Luckily we found it and didn't overheat the engine.

Once at the site, we found a path for the track hoe and tipper to go around the village instead of through it and the track hoe had completely dry soil to dig in. I got to be involved in initial mapping of the village so I spent my time searching the perimeter for grinding areas and sluicing areas. I found many of them and finally learned some new Hausa words. Wanke is slyicing or panning. Rua is water. Don't know if they are spelled correctly...




On my perimeter search I found a man building a new silo for his guinea corn. It takes many days to build one.







My female counterpart went into a compound today where a two year-old boy who used to be very active and playful is now lethargic and can hardly walk. He will hopefully make it into the hospital tomorrow to begin chelation treatment.  The kids in these villages are amazing.


Sunday, October 31, 2010

Day off...

Six of us spent 5.5 hours on the "road" today to look at the next two villages on our list. They are maybe 1km apart and an hour past the village we visited last week.

The path to these villages is what I was hoping to see over here. Full canopied forests with intact streams and very small confined roads that are still almost smooth in sections because of the low volumn of traffic traveling in these areas. It was great. We got out to look at a stream crossing and heard a bunch of birds that you usually only hear at the zoo.


The lead levels were between 1000ppm and 5000ppm with some areas around the grinding sites near 20000ppm. Five kids died in that one compound alone.

So we have our work cut our for us. The road kicked our butts and we are all very tired.


It's Getting Dusty

Yesterday morning we woke up to this distant haze. It almost looked like fog on the horizon. Someone explained to me that there are three seasons here - wet, hot, and dusty. Now I am noticing a fine layer of dust covering everything. What is odd is that there is no wind.  

Yesterday was my last day in the village I was working in. Today we are headed to a new village most of us haven't seen to site a landfill. This new village is a long way away and could take 3 to 4 hours to get to. We don't know and estimates given by the people helping us are usually off pretty significantly.

Everyone who had left earlier in the week came back last night so it was nice to see everyone again. Work in that far village is underway and should wrap up in two weeks. 

We are expecting some new arrivals this coming week. Whenever someone new arrives it is like Christmas because they bring us new supplies.  

Others are staying in the compound to finish writing the report for the first village which was done in July and August. The results of the remediation work are good in that levels are reduced but some compounds resumed ore processing after we left.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Days in Africa

It sort of hit me again today that I am in Africa. White men are called baturi. White women are called baturia. That is one way I know when the villagers are talking about us or are trying to get our attention.
This village I am working in is really a nice place. The fields are planned for multiple crops growing at the same time. From what I understand, they plant the millet and the guinea corn at the same time. Then the millet is harvested and the beans are planted. Then the beans are harvested and then the guinea corn is last. They grow rice during the wet season in the same fields as other crops like beans during the not-so-wet season. They do apply fertilizer about three or four times a year and I have seen pesticides and herbicides being applied too, but there aren't any tractors around that I have seen, so it is all done manually. I learned today that guinea corn is stored unprocessed in the silos. If it is unprocessed, then the ants can't get it and it can last up to three or four years.
As far as work, I shot a lot of soil in areas where ore processing occurred. One area right outside of a large compound had levels around 60000ppm. The kids were playing in the area and that same grinder which was grinding ore is now grinding food. There isn't a word for lead in Hausa, so we use "guba" which means poison. Unfortunately that one word coming from a baturi does not make a lot of sense to the villagers so I have to call in our interpreter to inform the head of the household.

Our interpreter...he is an amazing man who understands the problem of lead, cares for the people and kids of the village and can see how to fix the problem. We are all thankful for his talents and hopeful for his future.
Anyway, the landfill is complete, the clean soil piles will all be placed tonight, and the road will be built up adequately for the trucks to haul contaminated waste to the landfills. After that the excavator and the tipper will head to a large village on the way to the next two small villages which we will begin work on next week. Both the excavator and tipper driver are very talented. The excavator has a particular fondness for knocking over trees. These landfills at 30m by 10m by 5m deep and so any tree in the vicinity is taken out. It was actually comical on the placement of the previous landfill...we wanted to position the landfill to be able to keep the trees and the Nigerian interpreter was getting frustrated at us because we didn't understand that everybody else wanted the trees knocked down so they could use the wood for fuel or for other things. So down the trees went and in went the landfill right where the trees were.

We will be done with our part at this village tomorrow and heading to another on Sunday to site the landfill. Our commute time will triple on roads that are very rough. I know many people who love the rough muddy roads over here. To be honest I am getting tired of that part of this work but the landscape has its own beauty which makes each trip worth it. I have a favorite tree here but I don't even know what it is called.
We are down to four people in the compound from ten. The others kicked off cleanup in a village to the west and they are staging out at a larger village in that area. By the time we are done there will be about seven villages that will have been cleaned up with hopes of a third phase to clean up a village larger than all seven of these villages combined.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Progress and Setbacks

To continue with last night’s goings on, the guy was indeed stung by a scorpion. He is doing well but feeling nauseas from the painkillers that he was given. The pain from the sting traveled up his leg very quickly and made it to his lower chest before the meds kicked in. He is hoping to get back out in the field tomorrow morning.
It isn't his fault at all, but some things in the village he was assigned to slowed down significantly.  In particular, the truck used for disposal was having mechanical problems later in the afternoon which means that about 200 bags of lead contaminated soil were left in the village instead of being taken to the landfill. Some of the young men on the disposal crew promised to guard the bags overnight to keep the kids from playing on them. The village chief was also notified so hopefully word will spread and the kids will stay off the bags. Another problem was the heat. XRFs don't like the heat over here and our blue ice in padded coolers only stay cool until about lunch time. So getting 260 soil shots in one day is a challenge.
The village I worked in today saw some progress. The exterior maps are fixed and I will shoot soil in those areas to confirm the data we already have and to find the extent of the contaminated soils. The interiors went very well, too. However, many of the compounds in this village are very large and very contaminated, so mapping goes slow in those compounds. All in all, no hiccups.
The first landfill, which turned into a swimming pool, was filled in this morning. The second landfill is in good condition but is not deep enough for all the contaminated soil. So we have a third landfill which is big and dry but the only access to it is not suitable for heavy loads. In fact, the area we have to drive through to get to that landfill is used as a rice paddy. So now we have to build a road.
The drive out to this village is between an hour and an hour and a half. The road is not really a road so much as it is path. In fact, the excavator tracked into the village about 12km and fixed three stream/river crossings so that we wouldn't have to walk 1km from the last river...
One the trip back from that village a man from another village stopped us to say that his village did ore processing and had sick children too. We are planning to stop there tomorrow to do a few shots with the XRF. If it is hot, then it will be another village to add to the list.
Things are great as far as the work. The villagers are very kind and the kids are amazing. Lots of laughter.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Fixing Site Maps

We made it out to the village this morning. There was very little rain in the village compared to where our compound is located. So the landfill we were worried about will work. However that landfill will not hold all of the lead contaminated waste so we will have the excavation crew build another landfill at a different location.

We are still mapping the village and remediation is not expected to start until next Tuesday so we still have some time. Another crew had previously mapped the exterior locations but the sketches on those maps were inadequate so I spent much of my day sketching the areas that need excavation and new soil.  Some of the readings in these exterior areas are pushing 60000ppm.

So it was a day of wandering around trying identify what areas were what and what useful information could be of use in developing new maps. I am pretty sure that most of the villagers thought I was lost or crazy...

Many of the exterior areas are under trees and near wells like the one in this picture.

The excavator started loading piles of dirt from the contaminated pond site into the tipper (dump truck) which promptly got stuck so we called off that operation. This picture shows the tight quarters through which the excavator has to travel.

Really it was a productive day. The female team mapped out about six compounds today so that brings us to over half done with all mapping.

On another subject, someone may have just been stung by a scorpion. We called MSF who is just down the road so he will be in good hands.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Compound Life

There was so much rain last night that we didn't go out in the field
at all today. You can't shoot soil with the XRF when it is wet and you
can't really get to the villages when the roads are wet. So we stayed
in the compound and had a meeting. Everything is on track but our
primary person, the man with the gray beard, is leaving tomorrow. As
far as the stakeholders in Nigeria are concerned, he is the project
and we all work under his direction.

After the meeting we got to work on the data. We have five XRF's and
shoot six days a week. So that means a lot of data to work with. We
have aerials of all the villages which we use to trace maps of each
village and color code the compounds into four categories. Less than
500 is no work. 500 to 1000 is new dirt. 1000 to 5000 is priority
excavate and bring in new soil. Over 5000 is high priority excavate
and bring in new soil. To make things more interesting we have to find
clean areas to dump piles of clean dirt for staging for putting new
dirt in the compounds. The new dirt usually comes from the vicinity or
the landfill which is tested prior to and during excavation to make
sure it is clean.

So part of the data work today is making sure the maps are accurate.
We have managers which we use from the ministry of the environment
locally to head up the excavation crews. They use our maps to direct
the crews of local villagers to actually do the work.

In two weeks time. We will have gone from about 40 workers in one
village to about 200 workers covering three villages.

It is a large project to say the least. Right now we aren't sure what
the weather will do tonight. We will have to wait and see if we can
make it to the villages tomorrow.   The other is the food shelf in the
kitchen.

This is the building with the restrooms and showers and kitchen.

The food shelf in the kitchen.

Monday, October 25, 2010

It's raining

We may be shut down tomorrow if the rain doesn't let up soon. A
trackhoe began digging a landfill pit this morning. When we arrived,
we determined that there was too much water there so we moved the
location to another area. We were going to make the final call on that
location tomorrow morning to see if too much water is seeping in, but
now it is raining and we won't know how much is seeping in. The pits
are about 30 meters long by 10 meters wide by 5 meters deep.

The village is not completely mapped so one team spent time going into
compounds to shoot soil in each area/room in the compound. We had
hoped to shoot the exterior areas but didn't get to that because of
the landfill issues.

There is an area of this village with about 250 cubic yards of
processed or waste which tests at about 7 percent lead.
The people in this village were very nice. Well, everybody is nice
but this place seemed happier and more personable.

The road to this village is about 30 km or so away but it takes an
hour and a half to get there. Luckily none of us get car sick.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Lots of Lead

Apologies are in order. I made it to Nigeria on Wednesday and thought
I was updating this blog via my cell phone but it appears I am doing
something wrong. So I will forward emails to my wife who will transfer
the email into the blog. I'll keep the personal stuff out of it.

So Wednesday in Abuja was interesting. Our driver was great and the
hotel was comfortable. The city however was very loud and busy. The
exhaust from the cars was everywhere. It was really horrible. We
didn't spend hardly any time there so my own judgment is not fully
informed.

The next day we flew into Sokoto where we met our driver who took us
to our staging area. We have a fenced compound with two nice
buildings, flushing toilets and full showers. The water is the same
temperature as outside so a "cooler" shower at the end of a day in the
village is just awesome. We have a kitchen with a cook, security 24
hours a day, launderer, and drivers. As far as nonprofit field work,
this is the Ritz.

My first two days were spent in a small village not far from here.
There are about 90 compoumds in the village with about 2000 people
total. The process for cleanup includes hiring local villagers for the
work and managers from the regional ministry in charge of the cleanup.
An advocacy group goes in first to instruct each compound in what will
happen and what they need to do to make things easier. The
excavation crew goes in and digs the soil. Then a disposal crew picks
up the bags of soil which were just dug up. Then a clean dirt crew
brings in clean soil which is the "topsoil" which is collected and
stored during the digging of the landfill. It was very hot work but
things went well considering the logistics of everything.

Today was sort of a day off for us but there isn't much to do in this
part of Nigeria so we went to a village that was not identified in the
original scope and looked around.

This village is larger than all of the others by quite a bit and it
actually had an area they called the Ore Market. Here we found samples
of ores from seven different mines in the region. We collected samples
and shot them with the XRF back at our compound. One was galena and is
likely 50 percent or more lead. The next lowest was 28000ppm, then
12000, then three around 2000 and two below 300ppm. Basically we can
use this info to help identify the sources.

The sad things today was that all the kids were following us around
playing on the piles of processed ore which looks almost like sand. We
saw a man sluecing in the area even though the govercment shut down
mining operations a couple months ago. We estimated about 10 acres of
land have been impacted and the average concetrations are over
50000ppm in this area with lots of waste piles and other fun things
for the kids to play on. There is no context for them to understand
the severity of the issue although they know about the one family
which has lost 11 kids to lead poisonong in the last year and five
more in the village died two weeks ago. It is heartbreaking.
Despite all, today was a good day for the group in that the village
head was very helpful, supportive, and thankful.

Tomorrow we will continue cleanup in the village I was in earlier this
week. However I get to move to another village to help construct a
landfill. Actually, I am only going because the heavy equipment crew
(which is currently made up of unemployed miners...) basically won't
listen to a woman even though she has the PE. At least I have
experiance with heavy equipment so I can speak that language.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Unknown Names

I read the names of some of the villages that are considered lead contaminated. There are about eight total not including ones that have been cleaned up. There may be others that haven't been identified yet too, so who know how big of an issue this really is. A quick search on Google Earth will pull up only two or three of these villages. Somehow, a place where people live not being identified on something that has become so common as GE is disheartening.

What I haven't heard, and hope to learn, is whether the efforts in the villages that have been cleaned up have proven effective. Hopefully that is that case.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Itinerary and Supplies

It came today. I leave on the 19th and return a month later. It sounds like we will get to Abuja, spend the night, and then fly from there to one of two state capitols in the NW region. From there we will drive to wherever we are staying, which may be some distance from where we are working. So we may not make it to the village until Friday of next week.

As far as supplies, they are mostly gathered for us and I only have to worry about very few items. However, we still don't know whether they want us to bring some things for testing or not. As far as food, it sounds like we will have breakfast and dinner supplies wherever we are staying. We may need to cook for ourselves. The meals during the day will consist of travel foods. That means things like Powerbars, canned tuna, trailmix and other things that don't require cooking. I'm wondering if I will lose a few pounds on this trip...

As far as packing, I am going on the minimalist side of things. Based on information from others who have been over there for this type of work, I am planning on washing my clothes almost everyday. We have been instructed to plan on leaving our clothes over there, but I am having a hard time with that. Since I don't really have clothes for this type of travel, I have picked up a couple items that hopefully will help out with the heat. I don't know...clothing is the big question for me. Do I pick some things up at thrift stores? or do I get outdoor stuff? Guess I will find out soon enough.

It is just a waiting game right now. Most everything is being arranged by others. Except for things being sort of last minute, it has been a pretty easy process.

One more week and I am outta here.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

My arm hurts...

Got my shots today. Hep A and B, Yellow Fever, Tdap, MMR, Polio, Influenza/H1N1 plus I have pills for Typhoid and will pick up a perscription for malaria. So things are still happening. Although I am still not sure of our departure date.

I may head over as soon at October 19th, but they still haven't confirmed anything. That's fine. Doesn't matter too much at this point.

The NPO has my passport and is taking care of the visas.

The next step for me is to start worrying about packing. It sounds like the best set up is to take very little and plan on washing my clothes each day. That makes a lot of sense really. I had thought about buying some new boots, but now I am thinking of just wearing what I have. No sense paying a ton of money for things that aren't really necessary.

Again I have heard that I may be helping out in a rather remote village. Not sure what that means except that facilities may be primitive. Hopefully I can at least get a pot of hot water to wash up everyday.

Future posts to this blog will become less specific from here on out. Actually, I may  end up utilizing a different website so that I can update via my Blackberry instead of having to rely on a computer connection which may not exists. Also, the less I take, the better.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Packet

Got the packet of info for the trip. Much of the information in there pertains more to people working for longer periods of time in various parts of the country. I will be working for only three weeks in Zamfara state which is in the northwest region of the country. A lot of the "scary" security concerns (i.e. kidnapping) are related to the oil companies which operate along the southern coast. The work we are doing is related to MSF which has a good reputation in the country. In reality, the most dangerous aspect of this work is going to be traveling on the roads over there.

The packet contains many pages of English/Hausa translations. The people in the villages apparently speak little or no English. The state and local officials who will be on site speak English, so that will be very helpful.

I finally learned yesterday that I won't be heading over there until the end of November. It is very likely that I will be leaving on or around Thanksgiving and that I won't be back until Christmas. Not ideal at all, but I don't expect to be able to switch times with anyone. Also, I believe that I will be teamed up with someone recruited by the Blacksmith Institute. So not only will I be in an area of the world I have never seen, I will be there with someone I don't know. Should be very interesting.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Received Word

Finally received the phone call from the organizers of the trip. I will be going sometime during the month of November. They should be sending me a packet of information regarding shots and what is recommended to take over there and what will be supplied.

It sounds like I will be in a vary remote area of the country. They are not sure if we will be staying in a "hotel" which is a couple hours drive from the villages we will be working in, which would mean a daily commute, or if we will be put up in a remote camp. I would prefer the remote camp instead of four hours of commuting everyday.

Up until today there was a slight chance that I wouldn't be going. I guess there still is that chance, but it is unlikely that I wouldn't go now. Oh, I received my passport a couple days ago. The expedited option cost quite a bit more, but they sure turned it around quickly. I think it took them about ten days to process it.

Still very excited about all this...

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Trip Planning

For those who may not have heard, young children in a number small villages in Nigeria have been dying from lead poisoning. The lead poisoning is a result of ore processing for gold in the homes of the villagers. The ore comes from local mines and is sold to the villagers who use milling machines to grind the ore into fine dirt and dust. The grinding process occurs in the living spaces of the compounds in the villages and coats the entire area with lead containing dust. Some soil readings with an XRF have been as high as 200,000ppm of lead.

Apparently this ore processing has been occurring for about 20 years now. It is the peoples livelihood. But over the last year or so, the ore has been coming from an area with naturally high levels of lead, so we are only seeing lead poisoning issues in the last year or so. Reports are that up to 300 children have died of lead poisoning in the last year.

The problem was apparently identified by MSF. Since the discovery of this problem, non-profits and government entities have become involved to try to rectify the problem.

I have been given the opportunity to help in the cleanup of some villages. As I understand it, I will be traveling to Nigeria for a three week volunteer stint. Since the area we will be travelling to is predominately Muslim, men are not allowed into certain areas of the compounds (homes) so I will be working with a female counterpart. Our goal will be to use the XRF to document lead concentrations in the soil in each compound and to help make sure that soil with high lead concentrations is removed to an acceptable level, in this case I think it is 4,000ppm. Once the soil is removed, new clean soil will be brought in and spread around. In addition to our cleanup efforts, I am under the impression that the Nigerian government is assisting the villages in moving the milling operations outside of the villages. The hope (compromise) is that the villages will stay relatively clean and the villagers will be able to continue with their livlihood.

I am very excited to be involved in this cleanup effort. I don't have all the details yet, but I believe I will be heading over there sometime in October. I hope to provide updates as often as possible. Word is that there are cell towers all over the area I am going to be in even though it is very remote. I believe we will be working along the southern edge of the Sahara.

I have had a consultation with a travel medicine center here in Boise. There are many shots that are recommended, only a few required. At this point I am waiting to hear from the NPO as to which shots they will require me to get. As far as I am aware, all expenses will be paid for on this trip except my time. As it happens, I have more than enough PTO saved to make this trip. My family is supportive of the trip too. Everything is falling into place very nicely, including the support of my employer.

My next move is to get everything gathered and to learn what I can about the area. A friend of mine recommended that I read "Half of a Yellow Sun" to get some idea of how the culture has developed because of the revolution. There is a small part of me that is a little freaked out by all this, but I am more excited than anything else.