Human Ecosystems: Botam-Tai District
EXTRACTS FROM THE 1993 SURVEY DIARY OF N. J. ASHTON-JONES
20th October: see oil spill at Osadiga - occurred in March and reported but nothing happened until June when it was referred to Ken Saro-Wiwa in jail.
23rd October a.m.: visit Korokoro to see oil blowout. At Shell Location 5, which had started on the 17th and been visited by Shell staff with an armed escort on the 21st. The blowout was contaminating the Korokoro River that by way of the Horo, Ueken, Kpite, Deken, Kani (Kano?), Yeghi and Bori Rivers, feeds into the Imo River Southeast of Bori. Oil was seen spraying out of a damaged valve covering an area of about 100 m diameter around including the Korokoro River, a Raffia tapping homestead on the banks of the river, a cassava farm owned by Mrs E......... A........., and the Agbartor shrine. The pipeline is used as a footbridge across a stream.
5th November: Wade across the river which is dominated by raffia palm and seriously polluted by oil which forms an emulsified scum on the surface; the water smells oily. Clearly the oil killed a lot of the ground and water vegetation but new growth is apparent; no sign of fish although old fish baskets are seen.
7th November: Visit the oil pipeline junction near the village (Botam): there is a leak with oil bubbling out of the ground. The Or-Ntee River has an oily smell possibly contaminated by the March/June leak into the Osadiga (Orswaazigia Saadeghe?) River......... Confirm that the oil blowout seen on the 23rd October is still flowing.
17.9 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STATUS
Except for schools, public services do not exist in Botem-Tai or in any of the communities that we visited in 1993/94. There is no piped water, no electricity and no health services.
Men, who make most of the decisions, run the society. The condition of women is wretched. They do most of the farm work; they process the gari (and in some communities there are no gari-grinders); they do all the cooking and they look after children; they bear in excess of 6 children and can expect 20% to die; if their husbands die or they give birth to children outside marriage they can expect little support; and they have to depend on traditional medicine (often very efficient and sensitive) in child-birth and for all the other usual women's ailments.
All members of society appear to suffer from frustration for themselves and for their children. This arises from poor agricultural yields, the lack of education and opportunities, their apparent abandonment by the government, but above all by the manifestation of the oil industry in their mist that seems to represent huge wealth and yet has given nothing to them except for the impoverishment of their land. This sense of frustration is most apparent amongst the young men and women who want a better education but if they get it find that they can do little with it. The young men particularly, hang aimlessly around their communities (sometime helping their mothers on the farm) or migrate to the slums of Port Harcourt in search of work and something better; we estimate that 40% of the males in Botem-Tai live outside the community.
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