South Sea Gold: Chapter Twenty-Five

Headline: THREE CHILDREN ILL FROM TOXIC MINE WASTE

Nerve damage usually permanent says medical expert

Tom's story gave the details of the pipeline break, the children's play in the resulting mud, the appearance of the "falling down disease" and his interview with Dr. Rao. A side-bar summarized the symptoms and permanent effects of konzo.

Jon Sinto followed it with an editorial on an inside page:

"Konzo is a well-recognized nutritional disease among East African farmers who live on a diet of the bitter variety of manioc. It is rare in Papua New Guinea, possibly because of its manner of preparation, or perhaps because newer "sweet manioc" varieties are commonly grown here, or perhaps because family gardens here provide a wider variety of food. It's appearance on Owego Island happened when the gold mine there discharged its cyanide-bearing waste into the sea, and when a break in that pipe-line was not sealed off from public access.

"The Owego gold and copper mine is not the only contributor to these children's illness, nor are the children the only victims of the mine's policy of throwing its waste into the sea. Following the example of several other mines in Papua New Guinea, the Owego mine, not yet even in full production, has damaged the local fishing industry and stifled the tourist business on other parts of the island and in the surrounding area in Milne Bay Province. It does not have to be this way. Other countries, with stricter laws, have largely done away with environmental damage from mining. But in the past, in our beautiful land, our government has turned a blind eye to massive mining pollution, fearing that foreign corporations will no longer come here to do their mining if costs of ore extraction increase. The government need not fear; the mining corporations will still come where the ore is. Wherever a million ounces of gold lie waiting in the ground, the corporations will come.

"But do our bureaucrats have other designs as well?"

"That newspaper team has done it again!" exploded Li Kao Hsai, flinging The Journal down on his desk. "Whatever happens, they manage to blame South Sea Gold!"

It was one more bad news item to explain to the Hong Kong office in the weekly conference call report that already spoke of new production delays. One of the exploratory drill holes had hit an underground water source, gushing a stream of steaming hot water from deep in the earth up into the mine's deepest level and halting work until the drill hole could be plugged. A company geologist recommended a special pump, able to handle the water's heat and acid content, and to expel the water out into the slurry pipeline.

Mr. Han in Hong Kong had not been happy. "Li, we pay you to deal with such matters, without adding to the operating costs. Now that you've already drawn the attention of the government's environmental people with these sick children, how do you think they'll react to the news that we intend to add heat and acid to your famous cyanide pipeline?"

"Other mines in PNG have similar problems, sir," Li said.

"Yes, but they deal with them quietly. You seem to have hired a damned publicity agency!"

Jeremy Blake spoke up, defending his job. "Sir, with respect, I suggest we turn the publicity to our advantage. The children's entire Port Moresby trip and their treatment has cost us less than what we spend in trying to change a single government policy, and it will gain us popular favor besides."

The CEO barked an interruption: "At this point, you'd better do something about the whole cyanide mess. Disposal in the ocean is getting more expensive with every news headline. Get me a cost estimate for that waste-paste process or whatever you call it, to see if we can stay out of the news spotlight for a couple of months. Have something to show me by next week!" He hung up.

Li looked at Blake in surprise. "That's quite a turn-around."

"I guess progress is coming to The People's Republic along with the rest of the world. How do we find out how to set up this transformation of slurry into solids?"

"Some back-water place in America called Idaho, I believe," said Li."We'd better get at it. I expect Hong Kong will be sending more engineers down here."

Jeremy visited Tom at The Journal's office that afternoon with a news release, but he wanted information as well. "Okay, Mr. Li and I now have Hong Kong's permission to investigate other choices of mine-waste disposal. The mining engineers will do the technical side, but how are Mr. Li and our staff going to understand what's going on? You've been researching this for the past month, Tom; I've been on the Internet all morning and I'm already lost. It will move faster if we work together. What do you think?"

"I agree. No hard feelings about my news articles?"

"Agreed," Jeremy said, "as long as you understand my position. I work for a mining company. South Sea Gold's goal is providing raw materials for China's development."

"I understand. And our goal is making sure that PNG's resources―your raw materials―are sold at a fair price, and that the money is not siphoned off into the wrong bank accounts, but is used to finance PNG's national needs."

"And those goals leave some room for argument about what is the most practical way of dealing," said Jeremy.

"And some of the deals are not under either my control or yours," said Tom, "but we do what we can. Do you know the other members of our team?"

"Only from their writing. I'd like to meet them."

Tom took him around to meet Jon, Sophia, and Matt.

"I've met your CEO several times up in Hong Kong," said Matt, as they shook hands. "I usually work up there with the Chronicle.

Jeremy gave a wry smile. "That explains a lot. He's known to be, let's say, not the easiest man to get along with. He's usually on our backs to cut costs, but these sick kids have convinced him that it'll be cheaper to get rid of the deep-sea waste disposal program. He wants a report by next week, and I can't even understand the language. What are these 'non-Newtonian fluids' the engineers keep talking about?"

Tom grinned in sympathy. "I didn't know either, when I started writing this mining series. Think of it this way―You tip a cup of any ordinary liquid and the liquid spills out. Now think of a tube of tooth paste. Tip the tube and nothing happens; the paste is too thick. You have to squeeze the tube to get it out. Same with a thick slurry, you need pressure to make it move. Mine tailings paste is like tooth paste, or better yet like wet concrete; the solids and the water don't separate even when not being stirred or transported."

"So why would you want to make it harder to move? It moves through a pipe just fine, the way we're doing it now."

"The problem is storage. When you pump it into the ocean or a river, it kills the fish, and pollutes the water. Pump it on to someone's land and you've got all that water in a pond or behind a dam. When the pond is full you've got to build another one. And if the dam breaks, you ruin a whole river system. Other people live on that land too. They don't want more tons of dirt dumped on them each day."

"So you're saying don't mine the gold?"

"No, I'm saying mine it responsibly. Leave the land and waterways as good as they were before the mine was there. After you extract the gold, silver, copper, from the slurry then extract most of the water too."

"How?"

"Centrifuge it, filter it, or vacuum-distill it. That's an engineering problem. Basically, you're left with mud plus a much smaller amount of water that you can remove the pollutants from and then recycle.

"Your mining engineers turn the slurry mud and waste rock into a thick paste by mixing it with the right amount of cement to allow it to be pumped underground. The right mixture can be pumped along a kilometer or more of pipe, and then becomes solid within a few days. Solid enough to mine the next level underneath it, in safety from rock-falls, if it's done right."

Sophia had been listening to this with some skepticism. "I see a problem. Most of our mines in PNG are not underground. They're open pit."

"You can still put the paste-mix back in a mined-out section of the pit or on adjacent land. You can shape it with a temporary wall until it hardens. Pour the next batch on top of it. You can stack it, layer upon layer. It uses much less land, and doesn't need dams. There's no mud to flow down the river or to cover all the life on the ocean floor. Any toxic metals that you did not extract are sealed in the hardened paste. According to long-term testing over twenty years, that's where they stay."

"Are there any women mining engineers using this?" Sophia was still skeptical.

"I don't know, Sophia." Tom had learned to be patient with her obsession. She was, after all, senior to him in tenure. "I suppose I could check. Jeremy, does all that answer your questions?"

It points me in the right direction, Tom. Thanks."

Matt asked, "Are you prepared to find that your CEO in Hong Kong has changed his mind tomorrow?"

Jeremy paled. "Bite your tongue!"

"No, I've met your CEO in my work with The Chronicle over the past couple of years. My impression is he doesn't care about children, doesn't care about pollution, or Papua New Guinea's progress. He's only becoming aware of the legal swamp ahead if his company doesn't change direction, and he's choosing the least expensive route. Write your proposal carefully, with that in mind."

South Sea Gold: Chapter Twenty-four

Tom and Matt found Dr. Rao later that morning and asked for an interview. They explained their involvement with the families and with Owego Island. Dr. Rao recognized the public health implications. "You say the pipe line broke that carries mine waste to the sea, and the waste contains cyanide?"

Matt nodded. "And I saw children playing in the mud created by the spill."

"These three?"

"I don't think so; not that day at least. But the mud was there for more than a week before the pipe was finally fixed."

"Interesting. Now let's see if we can close the final gap in the chain."

That afternoon, Dr. Rao visited the children again. Tom had described his wife's brief association with Palli and Lisa as their school teacher. The doctor invited her to be his interpreter when he talked with the children individually, while their mothers waited outside the examining room.

After first questioning Palli about her island home and her family to put her at ease, Dr. Rao turned the conversation to what she liked to to do with Lisa and Timothy. It turned out that she and Lisa were close friends, but that they played with Timothy only occasionally. "He's a boy," she explained.

"And what do boys do that you don't like?"

"Sometimes he chases us, or pushes us when we're playing."

"Does he hurt you?"

"Not really, but he's bigger and thinks he can boss us around."

Palli was a talkative little girl, and could describe her village very well. One story, further along in their conversation, caught Dr. Rao's special attention.

"There's this big pipe that's broken, see, and it's made a mess on the road. Lisa and I had sticks and were scratching a path through the mud so the water could go to the ditch. Timothy came along and told us we were doing it wrong, and we told him to go away, and he pushed us in the mud, and that made us angry, and we splashed mud back at him, and it hit him in the face!" She giggled at the memory.

"And then what?" Dr. Rao encouraged.

"Well, he pushed us down again and tried to make us drink some of the muddy water, but we got away and ran! He chased us and we ran hard and he never caught us. But we were all worn out."

The doctor turned to Kim and said, "Tell your husband, I think we may have found the missing link in the story."

They went on to interview the other two, and the mothers as well, and found nothing to contradict Palli's story, except for Timothy's mother, who angrily denied that her son would ever behave like that. She emphasized it with a spit of betel juice, and in her irritation missed the spittoon.

Dr. Rao summed it up the next morning, presenting the three children's cases to all the senior medical students in their informal weekly clinical pathology conference. "Sometimes the cause of the sudden crisis in konzo remains a mystery, but most doctors who deal with it think that stress plays a part. For example, its appearance after a woman's childbirth. In our cases here, we have a chronic diet of manioc, sometimes carelessly prepared, and then the sudden addition of exposure to a new cyanide source from the pool of pipeline waste, together with the stress of a childhood fight-and-flight event.

"There is not much value in trying to assign blame for this unfortunate tragedy of three children partially disabled for life, except to learn from it." Dr. Rao was silent for a moment, thinking.

"Better schooling for this generation will make it possible for future mothers to prepare their family's food more wisely. . . .A better health-care system will provide therapy in home districts without the need to travel all the way to Port Moresby. And, although cyanide is apparently the best way to extract gold from its ore, better enforcement of mine safety laws could prevent fouling the surrounding community with toxic waste. You young doctors must never forget that the practice of medicine does not end with the diagnosis. Nor even with treatment."

The students pondered this silently for perhaps a minute. Dr. Rao sensed more questions coming, and waited. "Yes?" he said, as one of them half-raised her hand.

"About a better health-care system; we have our own medical school now, and a few districts have a hospital with an X-ray machine and a laboratory. But . . ." she struggled to express her question, "I am going back to a small town after I finish my studies. Many people I see will have to walk for a day or more to reach even my small clinic. What is 'a better health-care system' going to mean out in the districts?"

Dr. Rao nodded understandingly. "How do we get along in the districts, far from the X-ray, and laboratory, and consultants, is that it? You will be surprised when you realize how much equipment you already have. It starts with your own mind, which comes equipped with many 'applications'―ears with which to listen to your patient's story, eyes with which to see, a sense of curiosity with which to put together all that you see, hear, smell, feel. A stethoscope is not an extra necklace, you know, but a tool to listen to the heart, the bowel sounds, the breathing, and the baby within the mother's belly.

"You will not have a completely equipped lab in your clinic, but science has supplied you nowadays with some tools in the form of test-strips, with which you can detect not only the presence of malaria, but its type, at the bedside with a finger prick. Other test-strips to tell you whether the urine is infected, or the kidneys are failing, or whether the patient is diabetic. Used wisely, such tests should cost only one or two Kina. You don't need a laboratory to alert you to blood loss, or liver failure. Use the senses that God gave you. And always keep in touch with new developments. Subscribe to at least one good medical journal, and attend a medical conference every year or two."

T

South Sea Gold: Chapter Twenty-three

The message from the Owego Mine arrived at South Sea Gold's Port Moresby office next morning. As it happened, Jeremy Blake was the first to see it.

"Mr. Li, I don't know what they've got down there, but it could be serious. Even at best, I believe we should approve transport of these children to Alotau Hospital. Sending the company plane for them would be a positive move in our public relations situation."

Li Kao Hsai rubbed his chin as he studied the fax. "Not many helpful details here, but yes, Jeremy, I agree we could use some favorable publicity, and sending the plane would help. Fax the mine, tell them we will provide transport for the three children and one parent apiece to Alotau. Tell them to be ready this afternoon."

"Yes sir. Would it help if we could seize the initiative with a press release for tomorrow's editions?"

"Do it. I'll square it with headquarters in Hong Kong." But he thought, I'm not sure how.

Blake's news release arrived on Sophia's desk at 3 pm, well before deadline. She conferred with Jon Sinto. "This is an important change on South Sea's attitude. Tom and Matt are on the scene; how can we get in touch with them? "

"With luck, I can raise Matt on his mobile, but the conversation usually breaks up. The children are already on their way to the Alotau Hospital as we speak. The best way to reach Tom and Matt is to call that helicopter man Tom knows, and just have him go to Owego and bring our people to Alotau. They can go on covering the case from there. I think the service is listed as Island Heli, or some such." She checked her computer. "Island Heliport. That's it." She looked up at Jon. "What'll I tell him?"

"Tom's been there a week or more. He should have covered the local scene thoroughly by now. Kim and Morrie will need a little time to pack. If the pilot goes to Owego early tomorrow morning, or better yet, tonight, he can get them back to Alotau tomorrow noon. Matt could either go with them, come back here, or stay on Owego; it's up to him and his boss at The Chronicle."

"I'll suggest Matt come back here," Sophia said decisively.

Sinto looked at her, saw her blush, but said nothing.

Tom, Kim, Morrie, and Matt loaded aboard the waiting helicopter next morning. Kim was very apologetic to Beverli and two of her pupils and their mothers who had come to see her off. "I hope I can come back soon, but it depends on my husband; his boss sends him wherever there's news. Anyway, I'll see the children at the Alotau hospital and let you know how they are." Morrie waved bye-bye to his friends as the helicopter rose and arced to the southwest. Kim stayed with Morrie at the Alotau guest house, while the two men went to the hospital. "Tell the kids Morrie and I will come see them tomorrow."

Tom and Matt asked the attendant at the hospital emergency room if they might speak with the doctor attending the three children from Owego. Presently, a young woman in a white coat appeared. "I'm Doctor Silanta. And you are...?"

They produced their respective reporter ID cards. "We've been following the children's condition for the past four days at Owego. "What can you tell us?"

"First, I need to speak to the parents," the doctor said. "Please wait here a moment." After a five-minute wait she returned, satisfied that the parents did indeed know these two men. "They can talk with you now. I'd like to verify a few details of their story with you too, if I may."

Tom talked with the children and parents in Tok Pisin then switched to English with the doctor so that Matt could follow it. "They say that they feel less pain now, but want to know when they can walk again. What do you think happened to them, Doctor? The attendant at the mine clinic said they had a virus."

"From what I've observed so far, they have no fever, and their minds are alert. I understand they all got this the same day?"

Tom nodded. "Within about a 36-hour period. Palli missed school first; Lisa missed the next day, and Timothy got ill later that same day."

"Sometimes we see a kind of hysteria among school children; one gets sick and then others imagine they have it too," Dr. Silanta said. "It's definitely not polio, with their legs so stiff. No signs of encephalitis or brain fever. I've not seen anyone like this before."

"About the hysteria," said Tom, "I saw Timothy the first day he became ill, and I found his muscles stiff, as you say. And he was the last to get sick. I don't think it was a "me too" reaction. It was real."

"I'm going to talk about these kids with the other doctors at our staff meeting tomorrow morning. There's always a reason for what's happening. We just have to find it." She excused herself to see another patient who had arrived in the Emergency Room.

"What did she say?" demanded Timothy's mother, an aggressive large woman.

"She was just discussing what diseases resemble the children's behavior. She is honest about it; says she hasn't seen anyone like this before, and will talk with the other doctors at their meeting tomorrow morning."

Timothy's mother snorted. "There's not much to decide!" she declared. "Either a witch is to blame, or the foreigners who came to dig in the ground and kill the fish." She spat betel juice out the window as Tom and Matt left.

"So, what do you think?" Matt asked as the two men walked back to the guest house.

"Something wrong in that village, something that's not happened before. Nobody in West Owego is sick, and the ER doctor here hasn't seen anything else like it in Milne Bay. Must be something involving the mine, but what? And why these three children and not others?"

A half-dozen doctors gathered in the children's ward the next morning to go over the known facts. They talked with the parents, examined the children, reviewed the symptoms. They considered diet, known parasites and infections in Owego's home district, as well as on the mainland around Alotau.

"We think it's a condition in the nervous system." Dr. Silanta explained to Tom and Kim, following the doctors' conference, but we have no neurologist on our staff. We'd like them to see someone at Port Moresby General Hospital or the Medical School who is more specialized than we are."

"Is there a neurologist up there?" asked Tom.

"There are neurosurgeons. And perhaps someone in pediatrics who has done special study on the nervous system since the time I trained there. We frankly don't know what else to do. But if this affected three children, it can affect more, and we need to find out what is happening."

"South Sea Gold has paid for this up to this point," said Tom. "But what about further transport and expenses?"

"Our hospital business office can figure the cost by air or by sea ambulance. It's cheaper to treat three children now than to treat a possible epidemic later. We'll work it out."

The neurosurgeon at Port Moresby's General Hospital spoke with an air of authority. "It's some acquired general defect in the central nervous system," he pronounced, after examining the three children the next day.

"What does that mean exactly, Doctor?" asked Tom. He often thought his whole job as a news reporter could be described as breaking down experts' big words into language the average reader could understand.

"It means there is nothing I can operate on," said the surgeon. "No brain tumor, no epilepsy, no physical injury. But we have a pediatric specialist from India visiting this week, and I'd like to consult him."

Dr. Sandur Rao, MBBS, visiting lecturer from Mumbai, India, was a physician in his fifties, with graying hair and a quiet manner. He made hospital rounds with three UPNG medical students who had expressed interest in childhood neurological diseases, and he found the three children from Owego very interesting. "We have here," he said, "three children with an obvious defect in nerve transmission, who all suddenly became ill within a day or two, without any preceding warning. They complain of pain in the legs, and falling over when they try to walk."

He lifted one of Timothy's thighs with his hand and gently tapped the tendon below the kneecap. Timothy's knee jerked involuntarily. The doctor then supported the calf of Timothy's leg, and with his other hand underneath the foot, briskly bent the ankle upward; the foot jerked back and forth several times before resting. "As you can see, his reflexes are active. Over-active, in fact. Who can tell me the nerve pathway from the leg to the brain?"

The students hesitated, not wanting to make a wrong answer. "The lower nerve goes from leg to spinal cord, where it connects with the upper nerve that goes to the brain?"

"Just so," Dr. Rao smiled. "And in polio, which segment is damaged?"

"The lower one."

"And therefore, what happens in the leg muscles?"

"There's no functioning nerve, so the leg just lies there, limp. It's paralyzed."

"So this is not polio, correct?" All three students nodded. Dr. Rao continued, "But if the upper nerve in the pathway from the brain is damaged, the spinal cord can still tell the muscle to contract, but the brain controls it poorly, if at all.

"We then have, not limp paralysis, but 'spastic paresis'―tense weakness. So these children have developed, all together, and suddenly, an upper motor neuron defect."

The students waited expectantly, their faces blank.

"There are several obscure conditions which cause such a problem to appear slowly," said Dr. Rao, "but only one that I know of that appears suddenly in children, and sometimes in women after childbirth, called konzo. It occurs in Africa where children often have to survive on a diet of cassava. Would one of you ask these mothers what they usually feed their children?"

A student translated the question into Tok Pisin. "She says manioc." The doctor motioned to ask the other two. "Manioc", they both replied. "But that's another word for cassava." the student added.

The specialist spoke quietly, with no trace of self-importance. "Now being a good doctor sometimes requires you to be a good detective. It does little good merely to make a diagnosis. You must find out the 'why' and correct it if you want to make your patient well. In my medical work in Mumbai I see an occasional laborer or his children who have moved there from East Africa, where many of the poorest people live on manioc. Who can tell me the problem with that?"

A student volunteered, "It tastes blah unless you add sugar."

Dr. Rao encouraged her with a faint smile. "And by 'blah' you mean...?"

"Not much taste, or even bitter. But it fills you up," she added.

"And why is it bitter?"

Apparently, none of the three students had ever thought about that.

"There is a trace of cyanide in the manioc pulp," said the doctor. "Not enough to kill you, but not wise to take every day, unless you are careful how you prepare it. Ask these mothers how they do it."

The girl student translated the question. Timothy's mother answered, her mouth full of betel, "Mash it and cook it."

"Does she soak it?" asked the doctor.

The student moved the spittoon on the floor closer to Timothy's mother, who ejected a mouthful of blood-red betel juice, tucked her cud into her cheek, and exhibited her blackened teeth. "If I have time." Her manner made it obvious she considered these questions a waste of that time, too.

"So now we may have a diagnosis, but we don't yet know why three children from different families reached the crisis point of sudden nerve damage at the same time. We'll see these children again tomorrow, and meanwhile, you three young doctor-detectives explore what these three children have in common apart from the others in their village."

"What's the cure for konzo?" asked one student.

"There isn't any." The specialist's face was sober. "Once it happens, it's a life-long disability. The best we can do is physiotherapy, to teach them how to walk in spite of it."

South Sea Gold: Chapter Twenty Two

The trip to Owego went smoothly. Kim showed her teaching certificate to the Milne Bay Province education office in Alotau and explained that she was doing a study on introducing elementary education in rural villages. The education officer saw no problem, on a short term basis, and gave her a brief note of informal approval.

Not wishing to call unnecessary attention to their arrival, the four of them, Tom, Matt, Kim and Morrie, chose to fly to an airstrip at one of the larger islands. They then hired a motorboat for the remaining one-hour trip to Owego's second village, which, they learned, simply went by the name West Owego.

Beverli, the guest house proprietor, was delighted to see new customers so soon after Sophia's promise to recommend her place. "Why didn't you bring her back with you?" she asked Matt in Tok Pisin, as Tom translated. Sophia had to work, Tom explained, but might come later. Tom made a courtesy call to the village headman, Keri, to say that his wife was a school teacher, studying ways to introduce schools into villages, and hoped they might talk with some of the local families. Keri asked if this was the school that had been promised by the Alotau office.

"No," Tom said, "A real school will come soon, but my wife might be persuaded to teach some of the village children during the short time she is here, if the village elders wish."

Keri nodded. "I think many of them would like that. May I talk with my friend Yari, too? He is hetman of the bay village."

"Yes, certainly." Tom didn't think it necessary to say that he already knew Yari Banta. "Meanwhile, I am recovering from a recent injury and am here to gain strength. But if I can be of any help in simple work around the village, please ask. Our guest, Matt, whom you may have already met, is from Hong Kong. He speaks English and Chinese, but not Tok Pisin."

"I speak some English, but not well. We will get along. Welcome to our village."

Beverli proved to be a fountain of local information. Originally from West Papua she and her Bengali husband, a trader, had lived in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, until he had died four years ago. She used her small inheritance to move to Milne Bay and set up the guest house she had always dreamed of. Her twenty-year-old son and an older married daughter both lived in West Owego; the daughter had a little girl a couple of years older than Morrie. Kim soon had several acquaintances in the village, some of whom had young children.

Late the next day, Tom and Matt walked over to the main village on the bay, looking for Yari Banta. They found him at his home, preparing for his night shift at the mine. He remembered them both, and also remembered that the boss from Port Moresby didn't want Tom around the mine because of his connection with the Port Moresby newspaper. "You are both welcome in my village," Yari said, "but I get in trouble if you go to the mine, Mr. Akani."

"What about me?" Matt asked. "Is it all right if I visit my engineer friend from Hong Kong?" Tom translated.

"Big boss said nothing about that. I guess it would be all right," Yari said.

"Can you tell me anything about the slurry pipe line?" asked Tom.

"Last landslide crush it again, where it passes close to the hill. Stronger new pipe will come on airplane in about two days. They pass less slurry a day now, but on more days. Pipe still leaks. Big boss says don't shut it off."

Kim had her temporary school set up to start four days after their arrival. Six children from West Owego and four from Bay Village would come for an hour or two each weekday morning. Kim learned that few villagers kept close track of time. Some other families thought that school might be a good idea, but decided to wait and see what it was like, and how much it would interfere with children's duties at home. The children adopted Morrie as their mascot, entering into their games, and content to draw pictures while the older children learned to read.

Tom and Matt talked with the village men, became more acquainted with fishing and subsistence farming, taking notes for further background stories. On the third day a cargo plane arrived, and they walked to the airstrip to see if the new pipe had come. They found four men loading three dozen four-metre sections of new pipe onto the mine's flat-bed lorry along with several crates. The Chinese resident engineer was signing a manifest. Matt asked,"Getting extra, in case of more breaks?"

"Better than that," the engineer said. "We're rerouting the pipeline into the field on the other side of the road to go around the landslide spot."

"My girl friend said a woman engineer would have planned it that way to start with."

The engineer laughed. "Once in a while, the women are right. But the mine boss thinks it was my idea, and and I'm going to let him go on believing it."

Matt walked up to see the damaged pipe and reported back to Tom and Kim, "There's still a large area of mud and leakage there by the side of the road. They're going to go under the road upstream, and again downstream from the trouble area, and there seems to be enough slope there so the flow should be good. The pipe will be about ten meters away from any more landslides."

"Any more kids making mud pies there?" asked Tom.

"Not while I was there. But it's nice mud for it."

"Except for traces of cyanide."

"Right."

"What do kids eat down here?" Tom asked Kim that night. "The rice Beverli feeds us comes from bags, not from local fields. Everybody has fish, of course. Sometimes pork on special occasions."

"Most of the families grow manioc for starch, here in the lowlands. It takes a while to prepare it; you have too boil it or soak it a long while to get the poison out. What I've seen in the gardens here are a kind of banana, a few coconut trees. She says yams don't do as well here as they do in the mountains, and there aren't many sago palms. The staple food in most families here in Owego is manioc. The bitter kind is usually easiest to grow in their soil, so that's what the kids usually get. They have green vegetables in their gardens, but maybe not as much as they should."

"But there's enough food?"

"If the parents are good farmers, yes. Maybe not always well balanced, especially when a parent is sick or disabled." Kim thought for a few minutes. "Kids here seem to be well fed, but somehow they aren't as full of energy as many kids back home."

Kim's concern grew stronger two days later, when one of her pupils from Bay Village failed to come to class. One of her companions told Kim, "Palli got very sick last night. Sharp pains in her legs and belly, so she stayed in bed today."

"I'm sorry to hear she is sick. Does she have fever?" Kim asked.

"I don't know," said her friend. "She falls down when she tries to walk."

Kim left Morrie with Tom when class was over, and walked back to Bay Village with her pupils. They took her to Palli's house, where Palli's grandmother was massaging the little girl's legs. Palli smiled when she saw her teacher. Her speech slurred a little, but she seemed alert. Kim felt her arm; not hot, but she was trembling. "Are you cold, Palli?"

"No." She seemed to have a spasm then, and cried out. "My legs hurt me."

Kim watched her for several minutes. "What's wrong with her?" asked Grandmother.

"I don't know. Some infection perhaps . . ." Kim really had no idea.

"Is it a curse, do you think?" asked Grandmother.

"No, I don't think so," said Kim.. . . "Has the Clinic nurse looked at her? That might be a wise thing to do. Can her father carry her there?"

"Her father died in the mine," her grandmother said, "but I will ask her uncle."

Kim was very troubled as she walked back to West Owego. "I've never seen anything like that before," she told Tom and Matt. She was wide awake, not hot, but trembling. The family said she fell several times when she tried to walk."

"Do they immunize against polio down here in the provinces?" Tom wondered.

"I don't know, but I'm glad Morrie has had all his shots." She spent much of the afternoon looking through her Home Guide to Children's Health, but could find nothing remotely like what she had seen that morning.

Next morning, she asked her pupils about Palli.

They were all excited. "Lisa has the same thing! She hurts and she falls down!" The children from both villages could talk of nothing else. Kim did what she could to have them focus on reading, but she finally closed the class early. She told Tom and Matt, "I think you ought to look into this. Are we going to have an epidemic?"

They walked over to the village on the bay, and visited both families. Tom recognized Palli's grandmother. "You are the lady that visited us at the helicopter the day after your son died in the mine, aren't you?"

"Yes." Her Tok Pisin was halting but understandable. "What is happening to my family? My son has died. Is my little girl going to die too?"

"What did the nurse at the clinic say last night?" Kim asked.

"He said it was a virus infection. He gave her some panadol for the leg pain, but it hasn't helped."

Tom looked at Matt. "I'm baffled."

He was even more shaken after stopping at Yari Banta's house. The head man had another child to report: a ten-year-old boy, who had taken sick that afternoon.

They went with Yari to visit him. Like the other two children, he had leg pain and was unable to walk. Tom knew very little about medicine, but he tried moving one of the boy's legs. The leg was stiff, but not paralyzed. The boy himself could move it a little, but certainly not in a normal way.

"How did this start?" Tom asked.

"He and his brother had been working in the family's garden this morning. When it was time to go eat their morning meal, he and his older brother raced each other back to the house. This boy won, but after he had sat down to eat, he couldn't get up again, and said his legs hurt," said the father.

"What did he have to eat?"

"Only what he has every morning, a bowl of manioc and a bit of fish, same as the rest of the family."

The clinic nurse had little to add when they checked with him. "With three children sick at the same time, it's surely a virus," he said. "They should start to improve in a couple of more days, with some rest and plenty of water to drink. Not to worry, yet."

Kim was thankful next day that no more illness appeared among her school children. She even had a new pupil from Bay Village. On the other hand, the three sick ones were not improving. Palli thought her leg pain was a little better, but she still couldn't walk by herself.

That afternoon, Yari Banta called a meeting of the families in his village. No one had any new illness to report nor any change in the status of those who were ill. Village opinion on the cause of the illness was divided: some agreed with the clinic nurse. The farmers blamed the pipeline; four people believed the miners had brought a curse by wounding the spirit of the mountain with their drills. Arguments were growing acrimonious and Yari finally called a halt.

"Angry words are not helping our sick children. The mine clinic's nurse does not have medicine that is helping. This trouble is something uncommon. The district health sub-center will not have people who can deal with this. They should go to the hospital in Alotau."

South Sea Gold: Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one

Morning headline: MAGISTRATE DISMISSES CLAIMS AGAINST EDITOR

"Damn the Torpedoes" is not a terrorist threat

"The prosecution's case against The Journal's editor, Jon Sinto, fell apart yesterday when Magistrate Peter Magoro pointed out that the Constitution of our nation guarantees freedom of the press. He made no comment on where or how the accusations against our editor might have originated, leaving courtroom spectators guessing.

"The Jourmal, with nothing but recent anonymous threats to go on, is also left guessing. Is someone with government connections attempting to sabotage the paper's mine safety campaign​? Does someone object to the preservation of PNG's industrial diversity?"

Tom Akani's front page item went on to summarize recent developments in the rapidly expanding mining industry and the effects, both good and bad, on other local commerce. He ended with the comment, "What will it take to remedy the on-going pollution that the mining companies continue to ignore?"

In morning staff meeting, someone proposed a betting pool for which mine would be the next to have a pollution crisis. Early odds favored the huge mines, reasoning that dumping more than a thousand tonnes per day of waste rock and tailings would be a sure bet, sooner or later. A few bet on the newcomers, pointing out their tendency toward speed and cost cutting. No one chose the Owego, believing that lightning rarely strikes the same place twice.

They were wrong.

Li Kao Hsai, regional manager of South Sea Gold for Papua New Guinea, was on his weekly conference call to Mr. Han in Hong Kong. "Good news and bad news this week Sir," he declared.

"Let's have the good news first," growled the Hong Kong CEO. He bit back a comment that good news would be a refreshing first-time experience.

"We have reports on two more drill holes into the main ore body," said Li. "The gold and copper values are holding well, so far. Drill hole 16-B shows a significant content of the mineral molybdenite as well, with trace amounts of rhenium, just like our mine farther up the coast. You asked for rhenium last week; looks like you have got it."

. "What percentage?"

"A single drill hole can't give the full picture, but they think the molybdenum in the ore zone will run about four kilograms per tonne. Rhenium will usually be present as about 0.1 per cent of that, so maybe around four grams per tonne of ore. At market price of US $3,500 per kilogram for rhenium, that adds about fourteen American dollars value per tonne of ore."

Mr. Han was calculating his own possible benefit from this new find, when Li added, "Ready for the bad news, sir?"

The CEO laid down his pocket calculator with a sigh. "Let's have it."

"The land slide a couple weeks ago? There's been another, same place. Our temporary patch on the slurry pipeline now lies crushed under a meter of dirt and boulders. We're working to clear the rocks, but the pipe was badly hit. There's a lot of slurry leakage in the area. We'll have to shut down the pipeline until we can get sturdier plastic pipe in to replace it."

"Reduce the pipe pressure, but don't shut it down entirely," ordered the Hong Kong CEO. "Keep the copper coming."

After Li ended the call, he wondered how much of the overall picture was getting through to his boss. Nevertheless, he passed the instructions along to the day-shift manager at the mine, who reduced the pipe pressure by half, and doubled the hours of flow per day to compensate.

Inspector Kerro had come to a dead end in the Journal threats case. None of the usual information sources on the streets of Port Moresby seemed to know anything about the gang who had beaten Tom Akani and raped Maxine Edon. He checked with a constable who had interviewed Maxine after her assault.

"Nothing new, Inspector. I interviewed Maxine again yesterday and she can only remember that the short man who pointed the way back to the newspaper office was called 'Petey'. She doesn't remember him speaking to her, just pointed and then followed her at a distance. When she looked back from the door of the news building, he was gone."

"Anybody in our records fitting the description?" asked Kerro.

"I already looked. There's an eighteen-year-old named Petey who's been questioned a couple of times on petty thievery cases―cigarettes and the like―but no assaults or serious stuff, so far."

"If you can find him, bring him in for questioning," said Kerro.

"Will do, Inspector."

Two days later, he appeared at Kerro's office again. "Petey's here, Inspector."

Kerro rose from his desk. "Let's go see him."

Petey sat in an interrogation room chair, eyes down and sullen. He glanced up, saw another police uniform, looked down again.

"Petey, I'm Police Inspector Kerro."

"I haven't done anything."

"We just want to ask you some questions."

"I don't know anything."

"Some people say you do. Some people have been beat up lately."

"I didn't do it."

"But you were there. You saw it happen."

Petey said nothing. Kerro tried again. "Who are you afraid of, Petey? I can help you." He paused. "Those other three guys play rough, don't they?"

Petey nodded, eyes still downcast.

"They're headed for a dead end, Petey. Their dead end. Don't make it be yours too. Get out of it while you can."

"I'm scared they'll kill me!"

"The sooner we can get them, the sooner you won't have to worry about them any more. You can help make it happen."

Petey was silent. Kerro waited. Finally he heard the boy sigh, and in a small voice ask, "Can I have a cigarette?"

Kerro visited Tom and Kim Akani that evening. Morrie was already in bed and there was time for a quiet conversation. "This is confidential, and I didn't want to discuss it in the newspaper office or over the phone," Kerro said. Today we picked up one of the men we suspect was involved in the attack on Maxine. He confirms that it's the same men who attacked you, Tom, and says they plan more. He doesn't know who they work for; he's a petty thief who went along for the excitement; now he's afraid of being killed for what he knows. I don't want to alarm you, but I thought you ought to be aware of the risk of staying here at home until we can bring these guys in."

"Any idea when that will be?"

"We have to find them first," Kerro said. There was meditative silence. Kim went to check on Morrie. Tom knew his wife well enough to know that she would not rest easily in town.

Finally Tom spoke. "Kim has a leave of absence from her teaching job," he told Jason, "for health reasons, which is still technically true, I guess, if you consider possible physical attacks to be a health problem." Kim had returned to the room and was listening. Tom continued, "I'm still tied up with the Owego story and mining. I wish there was some solution that could keep us together."

"Sophia told me about the problem Owego has with the promised school that hasn't been built," said Kim. "Is there some way we could improvise a one-room temporary school house where I could teach, while you work on conditions at the mine?"

"I don't think I'd be welcome in Owego village," said Tom.

"Then set it up in the village where Matt and Sophia stayed. The villages are only two km apart. That's not too far for most kids to walk."

"What about schoolbooks? Where do we stay and how do we eat?" asked Tom.

"I know something about school administration," said Kerro. "My father used to be a headmaster in Mt. Hagen, you know. Let me see what I can find out."

"And I still get a paycheck," added Tom.

"It would be like a trial run for a few weeks, to see how parents accept the idea of their kids going to school," said Kim. "I know that some parents want their children to help in their gardens or fields. Maybe just learning to read at first, an hour or two a day. See what the village elders want."

Jon Sinto agreed with the idea next day. "Matt needs to be in on this, to keep up his reporting for the Hong Kong paper," he said. "And Sophia can be your office liaison here."