Going with the stream: How scrapping our itinerary helped us land the story

By the time I arrived in northwestern Kazakhstan, three of my interviews had been canceled, one in every of my interpreters had stop, and I had run out of money (to the dismay of a resort worker who was weighing whether or not to present me my room key or wait till I scurried again from an ATM).

I had been touring by way of Kazakhstan for eight days, reporting on the oil and fuel fields that feed the Caspian pipeline, a 939-mile oil transport route stretching from Kazakhstan to Russia. My analysis was a part of a brand new ICIJ investigation, dubbed Caspian Cabals, which traces the position of the Western oil firms that personal the pipeline and function the fields in environmental devastation and alleged monetary corruption.

Earlier than I landed in Kazakhstan, I spent 5 months studying concerning the toll the oil and fuel business had taken on a small neighborhood within the northwest. Almost a decade in the past, the village, referred to as Berezovka, had ceased to exist after a mysterious well being disaster within the native faculty. On a single day, about 20 kids and a handful of lecturers grew to become dizzy, misplaced consciousness or suffered seizures. Villagers blamed poisonous emissions from Karachaganak, a close-by oil and fuel subject operated by Shell, Eni, Chevron, Russia’s Lukoil and Kazakhstan’s state oil firm KazMunayGas.

In response to questions, a spokesperson from the three way partnership of oil firms, Karachaganak Petroleum Working (KPO), mentioned that Kazakh authorities had “excluded any involvement of the KPO consortium into the intoxications of kids and adults within the former Berezovka village.”

However residents and activists doubted these findings. By 2017, the Kazakh authorities had relocated all of Berezovka’s roughly 1,300 residents to surrounding communities, and by 2022, the oil firms had begun to bulldoze the village itself, with all its properties, farmland, and college and neighborhood buildings. However studying previous information reviews and parsing Russian- and Kazakh-language movies in my workplace in ICIJ’s Washington headquarters 5,000 miles away might solely take me up to now. To essentially perceive how the Berezovites have been affected, I wanted to go there.

After I lastly acquired to the resort in Uralsk, the closest main metropolis to Berezovka and the final cease on my three-legged tour of the nation, little or no was going in response to plan. I wanted a brand new method: I needed to scrap my itinerary and do some good old school door-knocking and cross my fingers that somebody would reply. So I — together with a reporter and videographer from ICIJ’s media associate Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an area driver and a (new) interpreter — piled right into a small minivan headed towards what remained of Berezovka and the encompassing communities, armed with our notebooks, a digicam and the hope that we might land a strong story on the ultimate days of our journey.

Araltal

Our first cease was Araltal, a small city the place many former Berezovites have been resettled. The highway to Araltal was a bumpy one. For 3 hours, we zigged and zagged to keep away from huge potholes and to dodge wild cattle and horses, previous swaths of the Kazakh steppe. Once we acquired to city, we hobbled out of the automobile, our heads throbbing from the journey, and have been greeted by a row of an identical red-brick homes.

We didn’t have any interviews scheduled; we didn’t even know if anybody can be house, so we simply knocked on the primary door we discovered. A girl answered and instructed us that she used to dwell in Berezovka however, startled by our digicam and notebooks, refused to speak with us for quite a lot of minutes. She instructed us to strive her good friend, Vera Voskoboy, and waved us in her route. However we have been met with one other disappointment: Vera didn’t reply her door … that’s, not till we requested her neighbor to present her a name. Quickly sufficient, a girl in a frayed gown and inexperienced headband opened the door and excitedly invited us in. She had a heat countenance, gold enamel and was lacking a finger on her proper hand. Flanked by potato crops, she agreed to an interview in her yard backyard.

Vera shortly dove into recollections of her granddaughter, who first fainted on the village faculty 10 years in the past and has had common fainting episodes since then. Vera believed her sickness was a results of Karachaganak’s emissions. “She was shaking a lot,” she mentioned with tears in her eyes, describing the primary time her granddaughter had a seizure. “God forbid you must see it.” The story was distressing, however I used to be additionally overcome by a unique feeling: that Vera had been ready for somebody to knock on her door and ask her to inform it.

Berezovka

Heartened by Vera’s willingness to speak with us, we hopped again into the automobile and moved on to Berezovka to see the deserted neighborhood. We spent practically an hour there, snapping photographs of eerie scenes: A pile of wooden that was once a house. A horse’s corpse. A set of animal’s enamel.

As we wormed our approach by way of the deserted village, we have been stopped by a KPO worker. He wore a tough hat, sun shades and a bandana round his mouth. The outfit made him practically incognito. “You’re not allowed to be right here,” he mentioned in Russian. “The land belongs to KPO.”

My Kazakhstani colleague, well-versed within the native legal guidelines, challenged him, saying it was completely authorized for folks to drive by way of the world.

However he continued. “Simply go away.”

After a five-minute backwards and forwards, we departed in order to not escalate an already tense scenario. However as we drove away, the employee tailed us in a white sedan. We pulled over, and my Russian-speaking colleagues confronted him with a microphone and digicam. He vehemently swatted the digicam away, refusing to elucidate why he had adopted us. It was clear that the oil consortium wasn’t concerned with having journalists poke round.

Finally, he drove away and left us alone.

Zhanatalap

It was a visit of many firsts: my first time in Central Asia, my first time standing on the sting of an oil and fuel subject, and my first time having a standard Kazakh meal.

Our ultimate go to that day was about an hour from Berezovka, the place we stumbled upon an aged couple keen to elucidate how emissions from Karachaganak had affected them. After the interview, they insisted we be part of them for lunch, so we took off our footwear on the door and adopted them to a pink rug of their lounge, the place they served us sheep’s fats, apples and eggs; selfmade bitter cream, a well-liked Kazakh grain referred to as talkan and several other cups of tea. Whereas we ate, they instructed us about their struggles, not the least of which is that they don’t obtain sufficient help from the international oil firms which have broken their surroundings. At occasions, they mentioned, their water is oily and their air is unbreathable.

Our stomachs full, we mentioned our goodbyes. I used to be glad I had scrapped my itinerary that day. That’s to not say all the things went completely after that. We nonetheless needed to endure a site visitors cease for dashing, an uncomfortably lengthy passport inspection and one too many glasses of bitter camel’s milk.

However I felt a way of reduction. As I shook the couple’s palms, the Kazakh approach — my second hand on prime — they instructed me to go to once more.

“We’re so excited a journalist from Washington got here to see us,” the lady mentioned.