GOOD WORKS
DATA RECOVERY (below) Curious children from Kakuma Refugee Camp watch as Landon Wood, P.Geo., analyzes geophysical data. -photo courtesy Josie Bauman QUIET ON THE LINE? (right) Refugee and Turkana children tag along on the survey line with Landon Woods, P.Geo. After school, hundreds of children play in the dry river beds and haul water to their homes — or, in this case, watch Mr.
Woods spool 1,000 metres of cable across the sand. -photo courtesy Paul Bauman, P.Eng., P.Geoph.
and sanitation jobs with NGOs operating within the camp. Job prospects are also limited for the 120,000 Turkana people who live around the camp, but with the right skills they can find work with Kenyan water utilities. For the 35 students accepted into the course, this was an incredible opportunity to gain life-changing employment skills. The course covered topics like geophysical water exploration techniques, water well construction and evaluation, environmental hydrochemistry, and groundwater monitoring.
The goal of the training: livelihood
kilometres. That changed two years ago when he was contacted by IsraAID, an Israel-based non-governmental organization (NGO) involved in international development projects and humanitarian missions. Would Mr. Bauman be interested in teaching Kakuma refugees and Turkana vil- lagers a two-week groundwater and geo- physical exploration course? “I immediately said yes and looked at the map to figure out where Kakuma was,” says Mr. Bauman. The program IsraAID explained, after all, was exactly in his wheelhouse.
improvement.
Mr. Bauman is well known in the international aid community for his volunteer work in water-desperate places across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He’s volunteered his technical skills on many projects, using geophysics to find solutions to groundwater challenges. This level of commitment is one of the reasons he received APEGA’s 2016 Community Service Summit Award. Refugees in Kenya are technically not allowed to work, but exempted are water
66 | PEG FALL 2016
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker