GOOD WORKS
Seeking Water in a Harsh Land Amid cable-eating camels and curious children, a team of Calgary geoscientists discovers clean and reliable water sources for 200,000 people in the world’s third largest refugee camp
LIFE ON THE LAGGA A Turkana girl scoops water from a hole dug in dry river bed, or lagga. When this lagga dries up, herders will move on to a larger lagga nearby, in search of water for their livestock. -photo courtesy Paul Bauman, P.Eng., P.Geoph. 40 C, herds of camels trying to eat your seismic cables — when the school kids aren’t playing tug-of-war with the cables — and you’ve got yourself a real adventure. “It was the unusual local hazards that made things a little challenging — but inter- esting,” says Mr. Bauman.
largest refugee camp, with a population nearing 200,000. “It’s pretty cool to be able to use your profession to help people. I’ve never experi- enced anything that felt so good,” says crew member Erin Ernst, P.Geo. “It was really a unity of heart and mind.” “Seeing the camp was both exhilarating and terrifying,” recalls Ms. Ernst. “Kakuma is like a bustling town with shops and res- taurants and mud huts behind fences built of thorn bushes. It is amazing how tena- cious humans are, eking out an existence in the most inhospitable place I have ever been.” Finding water in the desert is no easy task, though. Add in knife-wielding locals, gunfire, punishing temperatures reaching
For Paul Bauman, P.Eng., P.Geoph., an intensive, two-week water exploration trip to Kakuma Refugee Camp — in the middle of Kenya’s Turkana desert — can be summed up in one word: crazy. How crazy? “Com- pletely, totally crazy,” he says. “Most people who have been there would say it’s prob- ably one of the most insane places on the planet. When you come back home, life just seems so boring.” Mr. Bauman and a crew of six col- leagues from Calgary’s Advisian, a division of APEGA Permit Holder WorleyParsons, travelled to the camp in January as part of a humanitarian mission funded by Geosci- entists Without Borders. Their objective was to identify potential wellsites to supply fresh water to Kakuma, the world’s third
AN NGO COMES CALLING
Despite Kakuma’s size, Mr. Bauman — like many — had never heard of the sprawling mishmash of buildings, carved into four compounds and spread over 12 square
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