From 1986 to 2007, Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) killed about 100,000 people in Acholiland in Northern Uganda, abducted and enslaved about an equal number, and displaced 1.7 million from their villages. About 2 million people lived in 200 displaced persons camps, with the largest holding more than 50,000 Acholi. Yet in our two weeks working in approximately 25 villages all over Acholiland, we did not see a single marked mass grave, see any remaining housing structures from the camps, or see a single marker or monument memorializing the violence and terror…until we went to Atiak
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Colin Miazga and I had been planning since June to do a water exploration program in the Nayapara and Leda refugee camps. In June, 2017, the population of the former was about 14,240 refugees, and of the latter, 19,230 Rohingya. But with the final round of violence beginning August 25th, Nayapara increased to 35,000 Rohingya, and Leda to 23,000 Rohingya. We moved up our start date, and expanded our crew to five.
...from a November 7, 2017 short interview interview I had on the Calgary eyeopener.
An October 26 interview with CBC Radio and TV about our upcoming water exploration program in the Rohingya Refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh. As of today, there are about 830,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled from Myanmar, with 620,000 having arrived only since August 25. The monsoon rains are ending, and they will need to move to yet undeveloped groundwater supplies.
Calgarians helping Rohingya refugees http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/calgary-eyeopener We geophysicists are very fortunate in the circumstances of our work in the Nayapara and Leda Refugee Camps. We are now interacting very closely with the refugee community. And we can have translation facilitated conversations about some quite intimate situations – water sources, distance to latrines, number of persons in the household, time spent collecting water, etc. However, the really heavy conversations about what happened in Myanmar are optional. Very much like after the Boxing Day Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, and very much unlike the refugees of Kakuma, I find the Rohingya are very open to talk about what happened in their homes and villages.
It is always very clear over the first day or two of an exploration program which individual is the most important member of the team. The learning curve is very steep for all 5 of us Canadians here. None of us speak more than a few words of Bangla. We do not have enough knowledge of the Bengali script to differentiate between the sign for a maternal health center and a tire repair shop. As we pull our cables through cities of plastic sheeting and mud, we have to constantly be aware that these are people`s homes; though, we do not have the cultural or language skills to properly excuse ourselves or ask for permission to pass
On October 29th, Alastair McClymont, Colin Miazga, Eric Johnson, Chris Slater, and Paul Bauman left Calgary and Vancouver with 24 pieces of baggage, most weighing 32 kg, for a two week water exploration program for the Rohingya Refugees in southeast Bangladesh. We left before the sun rose on Thursday, arrived in Dhaka after midnight on Saturday (minus three boxes of cables), and were menage a trois with UNHCR and Oxfam logisticians and WASH (WAter, Sanitation, and Hygiene) officers by Sunday afternoon. There was a lot to sort out – where would we go, how would we get there, and what exactly would we do.
Jet lagged with the 12 hour time difference and the stress of moving 560 kg of baggage from Calgary to Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh, and none of us speaking a word of Bengali or Bangla as they often call the language, we worked in the more bucolic areas near, but outside the Nayapara and Leda Camps on Monday and Tuesday. Today, November 3, we began exploring for water on the edges of the camps themselves, beginning with Leda. The geology has already pulled a few surprises, but so have the Teknaf Peninsula of Bangladesh and the people that live there, including the Rohingya refugees. We are just beginning to figure out the geology; and, we are just beginning to comprehend what has happened in Myanmar since August 25th, and what is now going on within the now 850,000 person Rohingya refugee population in the southeastern most corner of Bangladesh. An interesting and important article forwarded to me by two missionary water well drillers from Alaska I met on a desert run in Turkana. As there is no Islamic terrorism and likely Donald Trump is unfamiliar with the Turkana, the drought and famine there are not in the news as they somewhat are in Yemen, Somalia, and neighbouring South Sudan. The very expensive 2013 survey referred to in the article was a highly flawed exploration program whose overly optimistic and unsupported results were reported in the New York Times, BBC and other media, and created false expectations all over the Turkana and Kenya. In contrast, while I am not a supporter of any missionary activities anywhere, it is remarkable what 2 Alaskan water well drillers can accomplish with so few financial resources. I was, and continue to be impressed with what Larry and Joyce are accomplishing.
It is a year since we began our 2 week water exploration program in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, sponsored by the SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) GWB (Geoscientists Without Borders) Foundation, and which we called the Calgary to Kakuma Water Project. Using our results, in May 2016, UNHCR drilled 3 successful wells (that is, 3 for 3, with no dry or saline holes) to depths of 56, 74, and 62 meters below ground surface (mbgs), in what we termed in our report the “Northern Well Field”. The wells tested for sustainable yields of 40, 45, and 29 m3/hour, respectively. Given UNHCR’s practice of pumping supply wells for only 10 hours over each 24 hour period, this is enough water for 57,000 refugees, given UNHCR’s target of 20 liters per person per day.
We issued our full report in May 2016, and finalized it, after UNHCR review, in October 2016. The report is currently available in its entirety at www.paulbaumangeophysics.com (still in construction) We are planning to take on a similar project in the coming year, but hopefully in an even more challenging and water scarce location! (click image for article) We are featured as one of the New York Times' top news stories of 2016! Take a look! Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/2hWADwe New York Times Science writers have picked the discovery of the Holocaust period escape tunnel, dug by the “Burning Brigade” in the Ponar forest of Lithuania, as one of the top science stories of 2016. The 34 meter tunnel was dug by hand over 76 nights by Jewish slaves assigned to burn 100,000 bodies at the Ponar extermination site (see earlier Facebook posts). The pro bono geophysical work was done by Dr. Alastair McClymont and Paul Bauman from the near surface geophysics group in Calgary, Alberta, under the direction of archaeologists from the University of Hartford, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Gaon Museum in Lithuania. Besides the tunnel, we also identified the original Soviet fuel storage pit used for the mass burial of the initial 25,000 victims, the intact sub-levels of the “Great Synagogue” in Vilnius ransacked by the Nazis and later razed to the ground by the Soviets, and an individual and likely very significant grave inside the Rasu Prison that only 3 weeks ago was excavated and the tooth of a skeleton was removed, and is presently undergoing DNA analysis (more to come!). Below is a link to an earlier interview with Paul Bauman by the National Post, the link to the original New York Times Science Section article, and the link to the recent top 2016 science article retrospective. Paul and Alastair will be back in Lithuania in July doing pro bono investigations at other mass burial sites, particularly in Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania during the period between World War I and World War II. Unfortunately, and even tragically, the even more impressive and important water exploration pro bono work that 7 geophysicists (Erin Ernst, Randy Shinduke, Doug MacLean, Paul Bauman, Landon Woods, Coln Miazga, and Franklin Koch) from the Calgary office carried out in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and the Turkana Desert of northwest Kenya did not receive similar international media attention – though perhaps it will this year as the ongoing regional refugee crises become a worldwide calamity. http://news.nationalpost.com/…/a-canadian-pinpointed-the-se… http://www.nytimes.com/…/holocaust-ponar-tunnel-lithuania.h… For the NY Times "Science News that Stuck with us in 2016", copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/2hWADwe |
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