by Leanne A. Grossman
-USA-

The noxious smell of rotten eggs regularly blows over the rural village of Berezovka, Kazakhstan. The fumes come directly from the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field only five kilometers away, which emits toxic hydrogen sulfide during oil and gas extraction and refining.

by Leanne A. Grossman
-USA-

The Sumgayit Refugee Camp was nothing like I expected. Rather than mud-colored tents blowing in the wind, I encountered two half-painted cement structures surrounding a grey dirt courtyard. While it seemed a world away from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, we had left Baku only 30 minutes earlier. A woman wearing a cobalt blue outfit is bending over a bathtub that serves as her washtub minus the running water. Her family laundry will soon be added to the clotheslines that wave overhead. Time has called Sumgayit “the most polluted city in the world” due to oil and chemical industrial exploitation of the Caspian Sea basin.

I came to Sumgayit Refugee Camp as a representative of a global philanthropy organization and was joined by Azerbaijani colleagues who arranged our camp tour. My goal was to see firsthand the conditions in which refugees lived and to speak directly with camp residents about their lives.