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.

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.

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.

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.



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.

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.