Yeni Ramana: pumpjack meets laundry

Imagine you look out of your kitchen window and you see a donkey in your yard. And actually you behold a nodding donkey, aka pumpjack or oil derrick. Chances are high that you live on the Absheron peninsula and you built your house amidst the nodding donkeys. On the Absheron each donkey is typically accompanied by a tall steel tower that stands just above it. I could not yet figure out the function of it. It seems that a steel ladder goes up to a shaky platform on mid level and further up to the top. What is inspected from this elevated point?

Day and night you hear the pump extracting oil, day and night you are exposed to the pollution in your yard, day and night you may be worried that your little kid, whose laundry is flapping in front of the pumpjack, may play next day in the oil puddles in your yard.

These polluted areas are not the places local people want foreigners to go to. This post is not meant to point the finger to Azerbaijan and low environmental standards. In industrialized, oil-importing countries we often forget that there is a price beyond the dollar price tag per barrel that is paid. This woman walking home to her nodding donkey and her grandchild may pay the price.