When I first stumbled on This article I simply had to stop reading because I was too upset to continue. It's bad enough that we got idiots running around killing and raping people. It's bad enough that we have to deal with arms dealers willing and ready to sell guns to those who apparently only know the art of war. It's bad enough that Africa had been through the Atlantic Slave Trade (Maafa), now to add insult to injury, ships now come to Africa to again harm our people and exploit our land with the help, again, of the "leadership" of Africa.
Mr. Oudrawogol went outside to investigate. Beside the family’s compound, near his manioc and corn fields, he saw a stinking slick of black sludge...
Over the next few days, the skin of his 6-month-old son, Salam, bloomed with blisters, which burst into weeping sores all over his body. The whole family suffered headaches, nosebleeds and stomach aches...
It came from a Greek-owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by the London branch of a Swiss trading corporation whose fiscal headquarters are in the Netherlands. Safe disposal in Europe would have cost about $300,000, or perhaps twice that, counting the cost of delays. But because of decisions and actions made not only here but also in Europe, it was dumped on the doorstep of some of the world’s poorest people.
The tale of the sludge can be traced to July 2, when a rust-streaked tanker, the Probo Koala, arrived in Amsterdam after a lengthy stay in the Mediterranean. Leased by Trafigura, a global oil and metals trading company, it was pausing on its way to Estonia to unload what the company said was 250 tons of “marslops” or “regular slops.” That is the wash water from cleaning a ship’s holds, which would normally be laced with oil, gasoline, caustic soda or other chemicals...
At first the Ivorian government did not acknowledge that something was amiss, even though the rank smell was spreading through the streets of Abidjan. Officials say they suspect they will find more dump sites than the 18 identified so far.
And this is the stuff we know about.
Africa has long been a dumping ground for all sorts of things the developed world has no use for. “This is the underbelly of globalization,” said Jim Puckett, an activist at the Basel Action Network, an environmental group that fights toxic waste dumping. “Environmental regulations in the north have made disposing of waste expensive, so corporations look south.”
(17 years of informed commentary)
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