18. 1. Sodom and Gomorrah

At 2 p.m. we had an appointment with Mike Anane, and he brought us to the e-waste dump site. Sodom and Gomorrah is the name of the district, and it used to be the slums out of Accra, with high criminality. But in those times, it had green meadows, and the children were playing soccer there. So did Mike.

He goes there 3 times a week to talk to the people, make photographs and video testimonies, and collect waste with foreign labels. Mike looked a little bit like us, walking through the trash, collecting here and there.

Some of the electronic waste comes directly from the port – they check, if the devices work, and then bring them to this place. Other items go to small shops, the owners buy them and then find out, that they don´t work. They put them out on the street then, where people with carts come to collect and bring to this dump site. Here mostly children are working: they smash the devices and melt out the copper and lead. The smoke is extremely poisonous, lead makes people aggressive, thus causing fights. Many people there have serious scars everywhere. Most of all, the smoke causes cancer, and this children die early. They have diseases all the time.

They mostly have single mothers, who don´t know how to buy enough food to feed them, or buy school books. Most of them go to school in the morning, and work on the dump site all afternoon. The smoke is also bad for the brain, and most of them have very small bodies for their age, while their faces look older than they are. Children from all around come to Accra to work on this site, even from the neighbour countries, like Togo.

Girls work there to sell food or water, which is also used for cooling the metals.

We collected some dividends for our lucky shareholders, and the girls helping me to carry got some coins at the end – about 50 cents each, which is half of the daily income of the workers here.

On the way to the dump site, we noticed a green truck with the letters “RAS WASTE”, and “ADD JESUS TO YOUR LIFE”: the local disposal company of liquid manure. They empty their tanks directly into the sea, unfiltered. Mike told us, that he also was fighting against this practise, and that a new law against this is about to come.

When we came back, Manuel had 39,4 degrees fever, and we had to bring him to the hospital. “Mama” explained the driver where to go, and after about 2 km of driving, the taxi driver asked us, if we knew where to go. Then he continued driving. We stopped him, he asked other drivers, they showed in one direction and our driver went to another direction. We insisted to leave the taxi and asked people – there was a hospital around the corner, and we walked there. Manuel had to spend the night in the hospital – Malaria.