On the outskirts of Ghana’s biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland,
a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most
polluted bodies of water on Earth. The locals call it Sodom and
Gomorrah.
Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students
from the University of British Columbia have come here as part of a
global investigation to track a shadowy industry that’s causing big
problems here and around the world.
Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home,
a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them
across a dead river to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie.
Agbogbloshie has become one of the world’s digital dumping grounds,
where the West’s electronic waste, or e-waste, piles up—hundreds of
millions of tons of it each year.
1. How is the slum outside Ghana’s biggest city described?
2. Why did the news correspondent and graduate students go to Ghana?
3. What is the “shadowy industry” that is causing global problems?
4.What does the introduction reveal about Alex and his life in the slum?
5.What happens to the tons of e-waste produced by the West?
6. What is the human and environmental impact of e-waste?