It is 12:30am and I have just given up the fight for a peaceful night’s rest to a coalpit that has been lit since June 22nd 2023.
The stench gets worse at 3am when the rebellious, smoky air glides straight into my back window even if it is closed. This coal-pit has a fighting spirit which conquered Tropical Storm Bret and all of the other waves which followed. This coalpit seems to be a business which is renewed and strengthened on a regular basis.
There are usually more than one thriving coalpits in the area at any given time. The owners go home to their unpolluted neighborhoods. I cannot call my boss and tell him or her that I did not sleep so I am not coming to work. This area is a residential community. There are times when I have to seek shelter at my family’s or a friend’s house.
Firstly, I fell in love with the clean air, solitude and fertile soil which defined Yambou a million years ago. Now I am awakened by the continuous knocking of smoke which causes laboured breathing, irritated eyes, a sore throat, insomnia and more. It seems like I am living in a scary movie. When my neighbour was first diagnosed with cancer, while reviewing her chest x-ray images, the doctor had asked her if she was a smoker because she had seen smoke on her lungs.
In addition to this immediate problem, soot from the asphalt plant in Argyle traverses up through the residential river channel in Yambou. I can no longer hang clothes outside. Some persons in the area suffer from asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, cancer and more. We cannot breathe.
The polluted air circles around our houses, even if you move to another room, it is a stalker. Your life is at risk. It lingers, it stinks, it climbs down your throat, it invades the privacy of your home, and it prevents productivity. It steals normalcy and healthy living. Fungi grows when you are locked in from smoke and tiles can pop up. The curtains wear the reek of smoke. Soot dust decorates the porch and it stains walls. It is summer, when the house is closed from smoke the heat is unbearable.
I am extremely thankful that I am neither in Haiti nor Ukraine but it is really disheartening to pay a mortgage every month and be denied of the basic right to unpolluted air.
Who shall I really turn to for help? I thank God for the rain which he sends but this is no match for the fire magicians in Yambou. Several calls and visits were made to the Mespo Police Station. The officers were very cordial and supportive. They promised to report the matter to their superiors. I suspect that on a few occasions they visited the area. What measures did they actually take? This was not communicated to me. The coal-mine lives on.
My deceased grandmother from Diamond once told me a story in a dream of her first coal-pit. She had set a coal-pit on her lands in the river channel in Yambou. She had a conflict with the coal-pit setters. There was no one to pick the coalpit so it had burned for a year. Some of the neighbours had protested while some had died.
Who shall we really turn to for help?
Gasper