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.