A post-apocolypse scene

As you know from reading this blog, I am in the Old Fadama Slum a few times a week.  I've heard people comment about the lagoon, asking me if I've seen it yet and occasionally noting that it is on the list of 10 most polluted spots on the planet.  I'd hear comments such as, "It's on the same list as Chernobyl".

On Tuesday, March 4th, I was at the community center waiting for my mediation trainees to arrive.  We knew it would be a while and we start talking about the conditions of a particular alley that we walked down for the first time today.  The alley was no more than 4 feet wide the middle had a dirt gutter filled to the top with a greenish-gray glop that was about 2 feet wide.  I was asking what happens during the rainy season.

I was then taken outside and shown where the alley leads to, a hill made of garbage, and told to imagine how it must look when it rains heavily day in and day out.  I'm told, "it gets mucky", with no further elaboration.  Later. I'm told that people get big bags of sawdust and throw it down on the mud.  I can see in places where the mud/dirt is mixed with sawdust.

The view of the gutter as we followed it into a wider area.

You can dee where the gutter ends (or goes into pipe and comes out in river at other side of hill?) and then the hill of garbage.  It's hard to tell it's a hill, but it looks like the garbage is the remnants of last rainy season washing garbage downhill to that spot and/or washing away any dirt covering.  

  We then walked up the hill, taking a path just the left of the last hut standing in a row above (each one is a one room house).  I took a pictures as we walked up to a road that heads to right and to a small rise (it's mostly flat here with small rises of land).  You need to enlarge these photos to see anything.

Looking away from the lagoon

On top of the little hill where I hoped to get a shot of the roofs of old fadama which includes a mosque in the midde forefront.  However the guys sitting against the house on the right starting to make noises so I took the shot without raising the camera.  In the middle you can see a sign with different photos of heads.  That's a sign for a barber.

From the top of the rise, it's less than 50 yards to the edge of small bluff, that drops off to a slowly moving river of dark gray water.  It's a scene of utter pollution devastation.  The water flows from the right to left in the pictures and two small rivers (they beome bigger rivers in wet season) are coming together to form one river that flows into the sea - Bay of Guinea.  Across the river to the left is a green field with a few cows.  Straight ahead is an enormous dump with a large herd of cows and to the left of them is a group of men burning plastic electronics to obtain the metal residue.  The copper wires are valuable scrap metal.  The smoke is highly toxic.  As you enlarge the photos, you will see hundreds of white egret type birds and dogs playing in the water.  It is now the dry season.  I'm told that during the wet season, This becomes are large lagoon and the water level rises to the height of the banks of where I am standing.

looking upstream at the convergence of two "rivers"

same view as above

Looking downstream so you see how land ends in a bluff.  Rivers bends to the left.

Looking at dump across river and the city behind that.  Enlarge the photo and see the herd of cows, hundreds of white birds and a few dogs.

another view with the field on the left bank

Looking upstream of the branch to the right using the "telephoto" so you can see the fires from scrap metal pickers.  They are burning parts of old electronics that can't have metal extracted any other way.

Lastly, I have a photo of a stream on my left that ends at a pipe underneath a house that then dumps straight into the river at my left.  You can see how the newer gray water mixes into the dark gray river.  Notice the goats standing by the stream and the resting man.  I didn't really take notice of the man before, but seeing the red bowl, he looks like he is begging, but that would be very odd, as this is not a highly trafficked area.  As for the goats, lots of them just roam around old Fadama.