What is happening in Agbogbloshie? People love gadgets, and especially new ones. Bigger screens. Faster processors. More flexible profiles. But what happens to the old ones? cell phones phones, our old computers, our TVs, and our refrigerators?
Some of them end up in a place like this Agbogbloshie, a huge, poisonous dump in Ghana. The former wetland has been transformed into a slum, and a large part of the earth has become a toxic cemetery for computers, refrigerators and other rubbish.
The German photographer Kevin McElvaney he captures with his lens, young people at risk of their lives, and in return for meager sums they collect copper from the old devices.
The town of Agbogbloshie is located in Accra and is known to the locals as Sodom and Gomorrah, like a hell of blackened ground that looks like an open wound. The "street cleaners", usually from 7 to 25 years old, sift the waste, first setting fire to the piles of rubbish to remove the rubber and plastic that hide the precious materials (copper).
Many of them are from northern Ghana or from neighboring countries such as Ivory Coast. They are poor, and often see Aggogbloshie as a way to earn fast money.
They work with bare hands, with slippers, breathe toxic fumes to earn an average of 2,50 dollars a day.
Although most leave their efforts after a few weeks, many soon, suffer from respiratory problems, insomnia, nausea and headaches.
Cancer and other diseases are rumored to kill many employees in e-waste from their 20s. Some ease their pain with drugs, but of course they have to work to buy them. "It's a vicious cycle," says McElvaney.
“On the north-west side of Agbogbloshie, children have constructed a bridge with old screens. There are so many screens in Agbogbloshie that have been converted into construction raw material. Towers made of keyboards and refrigerators used as walls of houses…”
Look at the pictures: Kevin McElvaney@Wired
