In the lesson, “A Tale of Three Villages”, the narrator highlights three places in particular I.e. Coco village in Nigeria, Ponnimanthuri Village in India, and Vorobyov Village in Ukraine. The narrator wants to show the effects of industrial wastes on the environment as well as on people. The narrator wants the readers to realize the damage being caused to the environment for the temporary pleasure of humans.
A Tale of Three Villages Summary
1. Koko Village, Nigeria Summary
Mr. Sunday Nana, his wife and four children live in Koko village, Nigeria. Five years ago the village was like any other African village — picturesque, colourful and noisy. But now in a clearing 200 m away from the village, next to a stream that the villagers get their drinking water from, is an enormous pyramid of identical drums reaching to the sky. The skull and crossbones symbol is clearly visible on each. Later Thomas Agonyo, one of the brightest boys in the village explained to the villagers that the drums contained poisonous chemicals and they had come from Italy. 13 people had died and lots of their children were sick in the last five years because of those poisonous drums.
2. Ponnimanthuri Village, India Summary
Ponnimanthuri village was once a beautiful village with all the green fields around and good harvests. But now it became highly polluted due to leather factory which uses as many as 250 different chemicals including heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and chromium. The villagers hope that the menfolk would get jobs and they would all become rich. But these chemicals poison their fields so that nothing would grow. They got ulcer and sores on their bodies. All are in a state of despair.
3. Vorobyov Village, Ukraine (formerly USSR) Summary
Natasha Revenko shared her bitter-sweet memories with the narrator. Natasha belongs to Vorobyov village in Ukraine. On April 26th 1986 which was her mother’s birthday a horrible incident happened. A big explosion from a nuclear reactor occurred in the morning, They saw a cloud of white smoke coming from the nuclear reactor. As it was a Saturday, the weekend the children were playing outside, picked up handfuls of the dust and threw it at each other, laughing. On Wednesday they were warned by the authorities not to touch the radioactive dust. But it was too late. A week later the children began to vomit and their hair fell out. Two weeks later her three children died £ > n the same day. Lots of village children and adults died.