Airsick

Created with 20,000 photographs and a haunting soundtrack, Airsick plays out like an unsettling dream. Photographer Lucas Oleniuk examines our addiction to fossil fuel - and its consequences. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/airsick

Airsick is exactly how I often feel breathing in the diesel smoke pouring from all of the cars and trucks here. Knowing that all of our electricity in Haiti comes from power plants that burn low grade diesel makes me question what development really looks like. Even my laptop runs on diesel here. (Diesel powers alternating current powers batteries powers inverter powers laptop powers me posting videos about pollution on my blog).

Speaking of oil, at 11:45 last night Luna ran into the house looking like one of those dead ducks from the BP oil spill. She must have chased something or been chased into a sewer. The sewer is where everybody here dumps their waste motor oil. We tried washing her and although the electricity wasn't on and we ran out of water, we were able to wash off about 50 percent of the oil (and everything else that you might find in a sewer in Port-Au-Prince). We decided that if she dies from licking the oil off, at least she'll cremate well. But seriously, it's disgusting. And there is no waste oil disposal system or recycling center so even the waste oil from NGOs doing environmental conservation will eventually end up in the sewers.

I've been working on an idea for a mango dryer that uses waste motor oil, but that's for another post. Meanwhile, we have oily paw prints everywhere and an oily cat that hates taking baths.