Paul Bauman Geophysics

Paul Bauman Geophysics Paul Bauman Geophysics provides geophysical equipment in support of humanitarian exploration efforts

On January 7, 2016 seven Calgary geophysicists, sponsored by the Geoscientists Without Borders (GWB) Foundation of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), will travel to Kenya with the NGO IsraAID. The group is volunteering their time to find safe groundwater for approximately 185,000 refugees living in the UNHCR Kakuma Refugee Camp near the borders of Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. Th

e program is being funded by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) through their Geoscientists Without Borders (GWB) program. The water supply situation is very difficult at Kakuma, with most areas receiving 14 to 19 liters of water per person per day. In comparison, the average Canadian uses about 280 liters per person per day in household consumption, and in a climate that is much cooler than the Turkana desert of northwest Kenya! The group plans to use modern geophysical exploration methods to help improve both the quantity and quality of water available to both the refugee and host Turkana communities.

We left Acholiland which our entire team of Zachary Alexa, Shelby DeMars, Erin Ernst, Alastair McClymont, and Paul Bauma...
04/12/2026

We left Acholiland which our entire team of Zachary Alexa, Shelby DeMars, Erin Ernst, Alastair McClymont, and Paul Bauman came to love. We moved south across that great demarcator of Northern Uganda, the Victoria Nile. We had a brief but exciting stop at the Ziwa Rhino sanctuary. It took us 2 days to drive through “The Cattle Corridor” to reach the second area of our Uganda triptych of sites.

The Cattle Corridor stretches from the Kenya and South Sudan borders in the northeast to the Rwanda and Tanzania borders in the southwest. It covers a third of Uganda’s land area and holds 40% of the population.

Our destination was the Isingiro District, a semi-arid area of low and sporadic precipitation, rolling hills and grasslands, and a pastoralist society based on herding cows for both meat and dairy products, a bit like Southern Alberta.

Isingiro District is also the home of the Nakivale refugee settlement, Africa’s oldest, dating from 1958. It was established for Rwanda Tutsis suffering from ethnic tensions which preceded the later Rwanda Genocide, though Nakivale is now predominantly Congolese. While there are massive tent camps, the designated 79 settlement villages are mud cob homes with small parcels of arable land for subsistence farming. The refugee population is 280,000.

After almost 70 years of increasing refugee populations within the welcoming Ugandan refugee policies, the structure is fraying. There is not enough arable land. Infrastructure and services such as education and health are inadequate. There is not enough water. And stresses with the neighboring Ugandan host communities are increasing.

Our task was to investigate the utility of using ERT and TEM2Go to explore for groundwater-not an easy undertaking. Existing wells are relatively deep and poor producers, with almost all yielding less than 3 m3/hr and many being less than 1 m3/hr. The geology is complex and varies from valley to valley; generally, consisting of sequences of massive slates, phyllites, and quartzites sitting on granitic basement. Producing zones appear to be fractures as well as weathered zones within the relatively deep crystalline basement. All of these water-producing features may be too small and too deep for electrical methods to see from surface; but then, no one has tried!

We surveyed with ERT and TEM2Go for 2 days. We came up empty in the banana and matoke-filled Nyakatera valley, but we did site one well in the bucolic Ryamba Valley. If the well is successful, the District and Ministry hydrogeologists may have a viable exploration approach not only in Nakivale and in the host communities, but also more broadly in The Cattle Corridor.

We took an afternoon break to do a “walking” safari (there are “only” 72 leopards and one lion in the Park) in Lake Mburo National Park, an important watering and grazing area for both livestock and wildlife, and hence an epicenter of human-wildlife conflicts. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency IsraAID CBC Radio: The Current Izzy Rotsaert Zachary Alexa Geoscientists Without Borders TEMcompany UNICEF Uganda UNICEF Rotary International CBC

War is bad for wildlife. I have seen exceptions such as the preservation of rainforest in Northern Sumatra during the 30...
03/25/2026

War is bad for wildlife. I have seen exceptions such as the preservation of rainforest in Northern Sumatra during the 30 years of conflict with the Free Aceh Movement. But in Acholiland, the war with the LRA led to increased poaching, the hunting of “bush” meat by rebel groups and starving villagers, a collapse of conservation management, proliferation of weapons, and a shifting of priorities away from wildlife protection. While human-animal conflict remains a threat to wildlife, most conflict has human-human conflict, i.e. war, as its source.

Our water exploration sites were identified by the District offices of the Ministry of Water and Energy. We were given 4 sites in Gulu District, 2 sites in Omoro District, and 2 sites in Nwoya District. All of the sites shared traits of remoteness, previous dry boreholes, a lack of safe alternative water sources, and extreme poverty.

The larger ERT crew travelling in the Coaster bus explored in the eastern and closer village of Adede in Nwoya District. Shelby, Zac, Polycarp, Bosco and I traveled to the more distant village of Tee Obee. Our route took us to the northwestern corner of Uganda’s largest National Park, Murchison Falls, which straddles the Victoria Nile River.

We drove for an hour on a spider’s web of dusty tracks pretending to be roads. When we came to within 3 km of the village we gave up on driving and strapped on the TEM2Go backpacks. Along the muddy path to Tee Obeh we collected data through other small villages and family compounds, none of which had nearby water sources.

Reaching the hilltop village of Tee Obeh, we walked down through sloped gardens to the only water source, a spring oozing a miserly flow. The garden was barren. It had been trampled by elephants. There are more than 1,000 elephants in Murchison with no fence or physical boundary to pen them in.

As you drive into the city of Gulu, one is greeted by a life-sized bull elephant statue. The elephant is a totem of Acholi culture, representing strength, supremacy, wisdom, and community. Acholi people are proud that the Murchison elephant population has rebounded from less than 200 during the war. Meanwhile, Acholi in Nwoya District feel trapped by the pressures of conservation efforts, economic recovery from the LRA war, physically rebuilding their villages, and recovering their traditions and cultural values crushed during 25 years of conflict. We hope that creating safe water sources in the most hard done by villages in this District will be a significant step toward recovery.

By 1983, white and black rhinos were driven to extinction, partially as fallout from the Uganda “Bush War” against Idi Amin. On our 2-day drive from Acholiland to our next program in southwestern Uganda, we stopped at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary where six white rhinos were first re-introduced back in 2006. Today there are more than 70 in the Sanctuary. The next day we arrived in Mbarara on a Saturday and did a walking safari in Lake Mburo National Park on Sunday. It’s all part of being in Uganda. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency IsraAID Zachary Alexa CBC Radio: The Current UNICEF Uganda UNICEF Geoscientists Without Borders Rotary International CSEG

There is no better way to celebrate World Water Day than with a successful, 8 m3/hour water well in the Transit Camp of ...
03/24/2026

There is no better way to celebrate World Water Day than with a successful, 8 m3/hour water well in the Transit Camp of the 112,000+ Oure Cassoni Refugee Camp, located in Chad on the border with Darfur, Sudan. The Transit Camp is a camp within a camp, a hell within a hell. No shelters. No power. Little food. No easily accessible health care or schools. No reasonable access to water. Not much for shade. 45+ degrees in the summer and flooding in the rainy season. This is where newly arrived refugees from Northern Darfur arrive and camp (by the thousands of families) for months. The child-managed 15 m deep hand dug turbid water well is the only water source Izzy and I saw in our TEM2Go survey of the camp.

We provided UNHCR with 17 drilling targets from our January 2026 program in the refugee camps of eastern Chad. There are 5 targets in Oure Cassoni, with 2 targets being in the main camp, 1 target in a proposed new camp, and 2 marginal targets in the Transit Camp. UNHCR picked the most marginal of these 2 Transit Camp targets likely because it is the most water-stressed area of Oure Cassoni. The exploration team of Zachary Alex, Izzy Rotsaert, Sterling Mitchell, and Paul Bauman are…happy…but mostly relieved that the well drilled by the NGO LM International was successful.

The theme for World Water Day 2026 is “Water and Gender.” I am grateful for the opportunity to improve the lives of refugees in Eastern Chad who are 90+% women and children. At the same time, I recognize the opportunity I have had to work with so many extraordinary women in the WASH sector on the Chad and Uganda programs as geoscience colleagues, NGO partners, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency advisers and coordinators. In Chad this included Izzy Rotsaert, and in Uganda this included Shelby DeMars and Erin Ernst also from BGC Engineering, Delphine Mugisha from IsraAID, Emily Torgeman and Rachael Mutenyo from Innovation Africa, and the Acholi women in our Northern Uganda training group. Women are often beneficiaries of these programs, but they are also initiators and implementers. Geoscientists Without Borders CBC Radio: The Current IsraAID Izzy Rotsaert CSEG TEMcompany IsraAID

At least 1/3 of the 118 Acholi trainees with whom we have worked spent years in the “Protection” Camps established by th...
03/21/2026

At least 1/3 of the 118 Acholi trainees with whom we have worked spent years in the “Protection” Camps established by the government of Uganda during the 25-year civil war with the LRA. The forced concentration of Acholi villagers in these camps began in 1996. Following a November 2003 visit by Jan Egeland, the UN coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, the number of camps grew to 251 and the camp populations swelled to more than 2 million with about 90% being Acholi.

Egeland exclaimed that “the conflict in Northern Uganda is the biggest forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today. I was shocked, it is a moral outrage what has happened and is happening.” Following this declaration, funding poured into Uganda, though camp life improved only marginally. Water access increased from 1 liter per person per day to 4. Malaria, cholera, HIV, and dysentery persisted. Education, health, and child protection programs remained weak. There was little protection from the LRA. Ironically, it was this influx of aid that enabled the Government to expand the camps and continue to engage with the LRA in war. Humanitarian interventions are complicated.

In our just-completed Acholiland rural water supply exploration program, the Ministry drilled 2 water wells on 2 of our targets. Wells were completed in both boreholes. The rig was ready to demobilize back to Kampala. It was Sunday. We had just completed ERT and TEM2Go siting of a water well in a village of about 650 people where the closest spring is a 7 km walk or boda boda (motorcycle taxi) ride.

On Sunday, our geophysics group lead, Erin Ernst, sent an email to BGC requesting funding for a third well in this village of Lamin Pii. On Monday morning a positive response came back from BGC Squared. The well was immediately drilled to 50.6 m with 10 m of screen, testing for an astounding 10.4 m3/hour of water in a desperately water-stressed area. What could be wrong with this!

At least one of the Acholi trainees was protested. The cost of this single machine-drilled well could have funded 6 manually drilled wells in 6 villages.

He had a point, but…the Lamin Pii aquifer was too deep to drill by manual methods. The rig was there, with the mobilization from Kampala already paid. A 10.4 m3/hr well offers the possibilities of solar-powered pumping, elevated tanks and distribution of water to the broader community. The geophysical siting and immediate drilling of an unusually productive well strengthens the Ministry’s confidence in ERT and TEM methods. Seeing water gushing out of the parched earth and hearing an entire village ululating in joy is a motivation boost for the Acholi trainees, the Ministry, and us 6 Canadian geoscientists.

Humanitarian aid is complicated. Drilling the Lamin Pii borehole was the correct decision. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency UNICEF Geoscientists Without Borders Paul Bauman Geophysics IsraAID UNHCR Uganda UNICEF Uganda Unicef Zambia Zachary Alexa Trade Commissioner Service - Global Affairs Canada

8 field days passed quickly in Acholiland. We sited 15 village water wells; drilled and completed 3 wells; mobilized an ...
03/07/2026

8 field days passed quickly in Acholiland. We sited 15 village water wells; drilled and completed 3 wells; mobilized an ERT system donated by Guideline Geo; trained Acholi trainees on the hardware and software; included Ministry of Water and Gulu University hydrogeologists in the training; and sampled 8 of our 2023 wells. We also introduced a new geophysical survey method, TEMcompany's TEM2Go, that is clearly capable of optimally targeting water wells in 3 or 4 villages in a single day.

In 2018 and 2023, we Canadians put on an afternoon full of presentations and review, followed by a meal. This year the Acholi trainees organized a wrap up meeting at Gulu University, and ISRAAID Uganda feted everyone with a closing dinner. There were a number of emotive speeches from the Ugandans. I found these insightful as they contextualized our work here in Northern Uganda in a way that I never could, not being from here, not living the day-to-day realities, and not thinking much beyond mapping those aquifers and drilling those wells.

Dr. Collins Okello, the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, noted that “Here in this region there was what we call dependency syndrome…someone was going to bring us food, someone was going to bring us shelter, someone was going to bring us water. This training approach that I like so much was to empower the people so they could have their own water source…I wish we could extend this to other sectors… We have done so many major projects here in Uganda, but 2 or 3 years later you try to find the beneficiaries and you cannot. But here, 12 years later you [the Acholi trainees] are still here.”

One of the trainees, James Odong, described how the post-war security situation was unstable in 2015 when I first came to Gulu. He finished by observing that “People around the world think that we are the most hostile people anywhere, but people who come here want to stay forever.”

Chelimo Laban, a hydrogeologist with the Ministry, described the post-war development of water resources following 2007 as the war wound down, and villages slowly moved from springs “to hand dug wells up to 30 m, then on to drilled wells.” He concluded with an observation that hydrogeologists in North America and Europe should heed, that “identifying the resource is our biggest challenge.”

Dr. Okello estimated that a survey done in 2018 tabulated that the Acholi program participants had directly impacted about 20,000 people in the region. Eight years later, having targeted and completed 25 wells and repaired 20 wells in the training, and adding in the approximately 700 wells that have been completed by the trainees in their own entrepreneurial pursuits, along with the approximately 2,000 hand pumps they have repaired, the number of direct beneficiaries certainly exceeds 100,000. Leslie Gotfrit Dance Caller Geoscientists without Borders UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency UNICEF Josie Bauman Photography CBC CBC Radio: The Current CSEG Alastair McClymont Christy Rouault IsraAID Princeton University

In our 2018 and 2023 water exploration programs here in Acholiland in Northern Uganda, we drilled 22 successful water we...
03/06/2026

In our 2018 and 2023 water exploration programs here in Acholiland in Northern Uganda, we drilled 22 successful water wells with no dry holes. As part of our current program, we returned to the water wells drilled by manual methods in 2023. All of the wells are functioning. None of the wells have gone dry even for a single day, including in the dry season. All of the wells have tested for 0 to 3 CFU (colony forming units) of E coli,(less than 10 is considered safe; in contrast, the springs we sampled tested for between 10 and 100 CFU). All communities reported drastically reduced rates of diarrhea, with many also reporting lower rates of typhoid, bilharzia, and malaria.

Given our drilling success rate, the government of Uganda had enough confidence to commit to immediately drilling two of our geophysical water targets. It was exhilarating for us, the trainees, and the village spectators to carry out geophysical surveys one day, email the latitude and longitude to IsraAID and the drilling crew in the evening, and watch the well drilled and completed the next day. The first well at the village of Arut B was successful-plenty of water for a village hand pump. The second well at Atakara Mak Agwata was extremely successful for this area, airlifting 4 m3/hour, enough of a water yield to install a solar pump.

Both the Arut B and Atakara water wells were drilled on locations identified by the backpack portable TEM system the TEM2Go. Because we can cover so much more area with the TEM2Go as compared to other methods, we are improving on our drilling-in-the-best-spot philosophy, identifying deeper weathered zones with thicker saturated intervals and greater available water well drawdown.

While the ERT crew explored in the village of Awach, the victorious TEM2Go team of Shelby DeMars and Zac Alexa were at the drilling site reveling in the geysering of water during the airlifting, the attention of the village enthralled in a very different future unfolding before their eyes, and a feast of freshly slaughtered goat meat being cooked during the 3 hours of well development. Zac and Shelby made a point of messaging over to Awach to let us know that they may be a bit late heading back to Gulu University, depending on how long their feast and festivities lasted.

We saw them later that afternoon eating stale mandazi (African “donuts”, i.e., fried bread) at Gulu University. The goat meat extravaganza was prepared only for the drillers. Zachary Alexa was hungry, but Shelby was annoyed. After all, what did they do except find an amazing drilling target and enough water for this large village of 1,500. I imagined Shelby’s mind channeling the CIA agent Jessica Chastain in the movie Zero Dark Thirty when patronizingly questioned by the head of the CIA in the hunt for Osama Ben Laden – “I’m the MF that found this place. Sir.” Izzy Rotsaert UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency IsraAID Ines Colabrese CBC Radio: The Current CBC CSEG Josie Bauman Photography Leslie Gotfrit Dance Caller UNICEF

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is moving ahead to spend millions of dollars to bring war crime charges against J...
03/05/2026

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is moving ahead to spend millions of dollars to bring war crime charges against Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who fought a 25-year civil war against the UPDF (Uganda People’s Defence Forces). Yet it is 15 years since the war ended, and Kony’s whereabouts are unknown. It is not even certain if he is alive or in what country he may be in. From 2011 to 2017, the United States spent more than one billion dollars unsuccessfully searching for Kony. A 5 million USD bounty for information leading to the capture of Kony is still on offer.

With a few billion dollars being wasted on the capture of a 65-year-old diabetic living somewhere in an area of jungle approximately the size of Texas, it is odd that most of the rural 2 million Acholi people living in Northern Uganda cook on wood or charcoal, have no access to electricity, live in circular mud hats with thatched roofs, and draw their water from exposed seeps and variably functional hand pumps. Given that a new hand pump is 500 USD, a new water well can be manually drilled and installed for 1,500 USD, a typical pump repair cost is 20 USD, and that modern geophysical methods and well-trained crews can provide drilling targets in multiple villages in a single day, a few hundred million ICC dollars can solve a lot of problems that directly affect the lives of people in an area where the infant mortality rate exceeds that of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Erin Ernst, Zachary Alexa, Alastair McClymont, Shelby Demars, and I are back for another BGC Squared rural groundwater supply project in the Acholi-speaking districts of Northern Uganda. It is my 5th project in this area. We have a meager budget of about 80,000 USD cobbled together from BGC Engineering, Geoscientists Without Borders, the Kingston-North Kitsap Rotary Club, and unsolicited donations from family friends. We have support from the University of Calgary Department of Earth, Energy, and Environment and the U of C Isotope Science Lab, and great partnerships with the NGO IsraAID, Gulu University, and the Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment.

So, what do we plan to do in our short time here? Hopefully to change everything! In a period of less than two weeks we plan to site at least 10 drilling targets in 8 communities; drill and complete at least 3 groundwater wells, mobilize an ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) system donated by Guideline Geo, train 20 Ugandans (including 13 Acholi survivors of the war, Gulu University faculty, drillers, and government water scientists) in ERT data processing and interpretation, inspect and sample the 11 groundwater wells drilled in our 2023 program, carry out E coli testing at all of the 2023 drilled wells and implement backpack portable time domain exploration (i.e. TEM2Go) for the first time in Uganda. A lot! CBC Radio: The Current Alastair McClymont Leslie Gotfrit Dance Caller Ines Colabrese UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency IsraAID Izzy Rotsaert CBC Zachary Alexa Josie Bauman Photography Rotary Club

On January 29, 2025, 3 colleagues and I were doing our final packing for another in a series of rural groundwater explor...
03/05/2026

On January 29, 2025, 3 colleagues and I were doing our final packing for another in a series of rural groundwater exploration programs in Uganda, executed since 2015 in partnership with the NGO IsraAID and Gulu University. We were scheduled to fly out the next day to Entebbe.

I am a news ju**ie. Knowing that fire chases me as much as I run into the flames, I compulsively checked my phone for the latest news from Uganda, interrupting the tedious tasks of recording equipment serial numbers and completing customs documents. It was as if I expected something…and there it was….an outbreak of Sudan Ebola virus in Kampala. And the identified patient zero was from the exact unheard-of town in the east where we were heading, Mbale.

Ebola is not a disease of Africa. It is a disease of poverty, overcrowded conditions, poor education, and poor hygiene often resulting from a lack of access to water. From years of experience, Uganda and Ugandans know how to bring Ebola to its knees. But much of the world hoped that more Ugandans would die and further gaslight the USAID budget burning of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Ebola did not run rampant, though 4 Ugandans did die. Our program of increasing safe water access was put on hold for another year and the next dry season. And now, here we are, a somewhat different mix of BGC Engineering geoscientists than a year ago, heading to Entebbe on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines with 25 pieces of checked baggage and a few carry-on cases of lithium-ion batteries.

We returned from Chad 9 days ago, but it is not forgotten. Today, before the flight, we were communicating with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency about drilling targets at the proposed Maiba site and the existing Oure Cassoni refugee camp, transit camp, and proposed expansion camp. Yesterday we presented targets at the Marassabre camp to the Danish NGO LM International that appears ready to drill in the next few weeks. Drilling has already begun at the Iridimi camp. We no longer fear that our work will not be acted upon; rather, our trepidation is that high enough water yields might not be encountered. Colin Miazga and Izzy Rotsaert will continue to follow up with coordinating borehole locations with precise geophysical targets from our surveys.

As we marched for kilometers, sometimes mindlessly, through the clayey muds along the E coli infested Lake Karyari of Oure Cassoni Camp with the TEM2Go coils on our backs, dodging the infinite excavated pits for brick clay, latrines, and sunken animal pens, Izzy Rotsaert and I imagined ourselves as wrongly accused delinquents at Camp Green Lake in the Louis Sachar classic Holes. Yes, the book is about a justice, penal, and societal system gone believably berserk. But it is also a book about resilience, redemption, ingenuity, the long reach of history, and friendship. We are exploring for groundwater in Uganda, but I am also excited by what else we will find over the next 22 days. ISRAAID Uganda Ines Colabrese Leslie Gotfrit Dance Caller Josie Bauman Photography UNHCR Canada CBC CBC Radio: The Current Geoscientists Without Borders Geoscientists without Borders Zachary Alexa Christy Rouault

Aaron Salzberg is the Director of The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He was the Chi...
01/30/2026

Aaron Salzberg is the Director of The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He was the Chief of the Water Division at the U.S. Department of State for 8 years. He has a PhD from MIT, and was an Aerospace Engineer in the early part of his career. Jay Famiglietti is the Director of Science for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. Famiglietti pioneered the astounding methodology of monitoring the depletion of the Earth’s aquifers using gravity monitoring from NASA’s GRACE satellite mission. In a podcast interview with Famiglietti, Salzberg said of water scarcity around the globe, “This is harder than rocket science, to me, solving the water challenges is much harder than putting something into space.”

I sincerely believe Salzberg is wrong. Even locating and delineating groundwater resources for 1.4 million refugees tossed into the Sahel is not that difficult given the geophysical and remote sensing methods that are now available to us. But sure, if we spend tens of billions of dollars exploring for water on moons and planets in our own solar system, and leave water supply for refugees to under-resourced international aid organizations and NGOs, finding water for refugees is a challenge. Not only do these humanitarian bodies lack funds, but they have few resources in terms of geophysics, and scant hydrogeological expertise.

The BGC Engineering team (and what a team!) of Zac Alexa, Izzy Rotsaert, Sterling Mitchell, and myself feel extremely fortunate to have had such a technical and physical challenge in such a situation with so great a need, and so much opportunity for massive positive impact. And we had fun! But it is a societal and professional failure that one of the most significant humanitarian crises on the planet has to seize the opportunity of three smart and fit 20-something year olds and myself taking a month out of their professional “day jobs” and hopping over to Africa. 100% of the funding to get us and our equipment to Chad came from our employer, BGC Engineering and its philanthropic arm, BGC Squared. TEMCompany graciously provided significant technical support 24/7.

As with our 2024 Chad program, our attempts to acquire grant funding through a myriad of Byzantine processes met only with failure – “the project is too small”, “the project is too large”, “it’s not the kind of water project we fund”. In total, the BGC disbursements will come to a mere $40,000 USD, a small sum given the potential impact of this program. We are grateful to UNHCR for providing in-country transportation, accommodation, security support, and especially community engagement.

Even after my second program in Eastern Chad, I am truly confounded by the politics behind the Sudan civil war and especially the Darfur crisis. But I do know that water supply, the most essential need of the refugee and host communities, can be significantly improved if the will to do so is there. Izzy Rotsaert Zachary Alexa UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency Geoscientists Without Borders CBC Radio: The Current Ines Colabrese UNHCR Tchad UNICEF TCHAD UNICEF Solidarités International Princeton University IsraAID Innovation Africa CSEG

We completed our field work, and we are now working our way back to N’Djamena for presentations of our results to UNHCR,...
01/29/2026

We completed our field work, and we are now working our way back to N’Djamena for presentations of our results to UNHCR, the Water Ministry, and Swiss Cooperation. We collected 227.2 km of data in 15 field days. We worked in the refugee camps of Iridimi, Goudrane, Amnabak, Marasabre, and Oure Cassoni. And we explored the areas of proposed new camps at Arne and Maiba.

The construction of new camps is dependent on the presence of sufficient water resources. The proposed camps of Arne and Maiba will fall under a new model of “integrated settlements” where benefits going to the camps, including water, education, and health care, are shared with the “host” community, that is, the existing town (as in the case of Guereda) or village (as in the case of Maiba).

The Chadian government and the Chadian people have been welcoming to the 1.4 million Sudanese refugees. But Chad is a bitterly poor country where a mere 18% of the population have access to safe drinking water and 2% of rural Chadians have access to electricity. As such, the intent of supporting integrated settlements is to support refugees for the long term, provide an environment where host communities benefit from the presence of the refugee community, share improved infrastructure, create employment and employer opportunities, and fully integrate the refugees into Chadian society.

Yesterday we thought we were done. We packed our gear to return to Iriba. We left a few pieces of orange for the two Chadian tortoises in the UNHCR compound in Amdjarass. I took a bucket shower to wash away the dust and sweat. I even had an icy Chadian Gala ready to drink in the freezer. We were very, very done.

At 2:15, the UNHCR Oure Cassoni camp manager dropped by. “The City of Amdjarass is running out of water. The Sultan of the Bilia clan of the Zaghawa would be very grateful if you could explore for new groundwater sources in Wadi Hawar”, a massive wadi on the edge of the city. I had my long list of excuses ready, all of which I dropped when he mentioned that the Sultan was the brother of President Mahamat Deby whose hometown is Amdjarass.

The survey was a pleasure! I paired up with Sterling Mitchell. Zac put the receiver backpack on our UNHCR colleague Youssouf Abakar Aguidi. The late afternoon breeze and light were wonderful. The backdrop of Wadi Hawar is the edge of the Sahara Desert and Nubian Sandstone monoliths and arches sitting unconformably on the Precambrian basement. We crossed two impressive sand dams spanning the wadi, creating a shallow aquifer on the upstream side. The feldspathic sands in the setting sun glowed orange and pink. We quickly knocked off 10.9 km of line, bringing us to our prideful target of collecting 10 times more kilometers of data than we did in 2024. And, best of all, we delineated a very promising target. What a way to finish!Izzy Rotsaert Zachary Alexa UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency Geoscientists Without Borders Ines Colabrese CBC UNHCR Tchad CBC Radio: The Current UNICEF TCHAD UNICEF Innovation Africa Solidarités International

Address

54 Cougarstone Park Southwest
Calgary, AB

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Paul Bauman Geophysics posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Paul Bauman Geophysics:

Shortcuts

Share

Category