The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E10: Phyllis Saves the People from Poisoning

32m

Phyllis Omido is just a few months into a new job, when her infant son starts to get sick. Fevers, dehydration, hospitalisation - Phyllis is scared. Then the doctors give her some shocking news: Her son has lead poisoning. The metal smelting plant where Phyllis works, just outside Mombassa, Kenya, is leeching toxic chemicals into the water of the nearby river. And her son isn’t the only one who’s unwell: she believes the factory is poisoning the whole community.

So Phyllis turns campaigner, and starts gathering stories from all over town. Children with skin burned off, babies dying in the womb, women with mysterious fatal illnesses… And she’s going to force her employer, and the Kenyan government, to pay attention. It’s a fight that will see her life threatened, and her dubbed ‘The Erin Brockovich of East Africa’.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

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Hey girl friends, this episode includes some discussions of violence and infant death.

But you'll also hear from the woman who risked everything to save an entire village who all started to fall ill.

She's amazing.

So about three or four months into my job, my son started having fevers.

Of course, here in Kenya, when a child has fevers, you test for malaria, typhoid, you know, tropical diseases.

Phyllis's son is getting sicker by the day, but the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him.

Phyllis is terrified.

Eventually, he had to be hospitalized because he had lost a lot of water.

He was becoming dehydrated.

His eyes were watery.

He had become very weak.

Then one day, a friend visits Phyllis at the hospital and asks an unexpected question.

Phyllis, have you tested for lead poisoning?

I asked him why, he said, but we see you with your son at the office.

Almost every day you have your son in the office with you.

Don't you think he could be exposed to lead poisoning?

Lead poisoning wasn't even on the doctor's radar, so they sent her son's blood work to South Africa for testing.

When the blood work came back, he tested positive for lead poisoning.

The numbers are shocking.

35 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.

The World Health Organization says anything above 3.5 for children is dangerous.

But what was most terrifying is the fact that these pediatricians told me that the hospitals were not equipped to test or to manage lead poisoning.

For Phyllis, this is beyond alarming.

They were not trained, so they didn't know what to do.

So if a doctor tells you that, you know, it kills everything in you, it shatters everything in you.

But it also motivated me to start doing my own research on what is lead poisoning and how I could address it.

This has not come out of the blue.

You see, Phyllis works at a metal smelting plant in her local town.

For months, she's been trying to tell her bosses that she believes their factory may be poisoning the community.

I interacted with the community and they told me that they had noticed that the air had become very toxic.

They could not breathe.

The water that seeped from the industry into the river had changed the taste of the water.

It tasted metallic.

But the company won't listen, she says.

And now her own child has been poisoned.

Then I realized I was the only one who could save my son.

Phyllis is about to begin a fight that will make her the enemy of an entire industry.

One that will go to great lengths to keep their dirty little secret under the radar.

The question is: how much is Phyllis willing to risk to save the community?

I'm Anna Sinfield, and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is The Girlfriend's Spotlight, where we tell stories of women winning.

Today, Phyllis saves the people from poisoning.

It's 2009.

Phyllis Amido is a single mother looking for a fresh start in Mombasa, Kenya.

I was a young girl at that time, very young.

Recently moved from upcountry and I got the job as admin and human resource.

And therefore, I was in charge of licensing, employment, and all that in the organization.

The company hiring Phyllis is called Metal Refinery.

Since 2007, it's run a smelting factory recycling lead-acid batteries in the village of Owino Uhuru, just outside Mombasa.

Owino Uhuru is a small place with a few thousand residents.

It's often described as a slum.

Of course, I was offered a very good pay.

I was given a car.

And for me, those were really big incentives.

And of course, it was an opportunity to give my son a better life.

And my siblings were also depending on me.

From day one, something doesn't feel right about this job.

Even sitting in the office, you realize that there was a really pagan smell.

I was lucky because my office had an AC, so I would go in and close the door, but still there would be that, you know, your eyes are stinging, there is a smell of sulphur.

One of Phyllis's first tasks is to complete something called an environmental impact assessment.

So she brings in an expert to assess how the refinery is operating.

The expert advised me that the negative impacts of the company far outweighed the positive in terms of environmental and health impact to the community, the workers.

He told me that the location of this melter was wrong, that it needed to be moved.

And that is when I first actually absorbed and understood the magnitude of what this meant for us.

And am I right in thinking that you spoke to some of the other women who lived locally and they'd also noticed some problems?

Yes, so part of my work also was public relations.

I interacted with the community and they told me that they had noticed that the air had become very toxic.

They could not breathe.

The children were coughing at night.

The water that seeped from the industry into the river had changed the taste of the water in the river, that it tasted, you know, bitter, it tasted metallic.

And so they had their own suspicion already that something was going wrong.

But we did not have any scientific proof.

that something was actually wrong at that point.

Even walking around the town of Owino Ohuru, right next to the factory, Vyllis could immediately see things are not right.

When you walked on the playground, you could see particles of lead on the playground.

When you walked into the community, you would feel these particles landing onto your skin.

You would see them in the air.

And then she meets Kelvin.

Kelvin was a lovely little boy.

He was very naughty.

He loved to play football.

He's an orphan living with his grandmother, and his grandmother really doted over Kelvin a lot.

Unfortunately, one time when Kelvin was playing football on the playground,

he was trying to catch the ball and he stepped into the effluent living metal refinery and it completely burned his foot.

Toxic waste from the smelting plant was seeping into the soil in the children's playground.

While Kelvin's being treated at the local clinic, Phyllis decides to get his blood tested for lead poisoning.

It was, I think, around 35 at the time that we tested 35 micrograms per deciliter of lead in blood.

And what should be your lead levels in your blood?

Anything above 5 micrograms per deciliter of lead in blood is indicative of lead poisoning.

So he had 35 as a child, so that was alarming.

But the sad thing was that we tested him after three months and it went up up to 37.

And then we tested again, it went up up to 40 something.

So his blood bloodlead levels kept going higher and higher when metal refinery was open.

Armed with this evidence, the breathing problems, the metallic tasting water, the burns, Phyllis schedules an urgent meeting with her managers.

I was very alarmed at what I had found and I had assumed that if I presented these reports to the managers that they would be receptive and immediately look to protect life, not just the environment, but the life of the community.

But they immediately told me to stop what I was doing, that this would be given to one of the expatriates or managers who would deal with it, and that I should just concentrate on human resource.

Did you get the impression that they already knew that this was happening?

Yes, I got the impression that they already knew.

And then comes the moment that changes everything.

So, about three or four months into my job, my son started having fevers.

They hospitalized him, they put him on a trip.

He's diagnosed with lead poisoning.

And Phyllis decides to take matters into her own hands.

I would read day and night about incidents of lead poisoning, how they are managed.

I got as much information as I could.

How do I best help these children?

And that is exactly what I started to do.

At the hospital, the doctors aren't addressing the root cause.

They're just treating her son's symptoms.

So after a few weeks, he's discharged, and it's Phyllis who reads up on how to reduce his blood lead levels.

Things like drinking lots of milk, eating bananas, because foods with lots of calcium help to displace the lead.

Phyllis meets with her bosses again to tell them that her son is being poisoned.

And not only that, I had then tested 10 children from the community, and all 10 had tested positive for lead poisoning.

I think I had hoped that

they would feel, you know, ashamed and do something about it, you know?

Phyllis says the company offered her money in return for an agreement that she wouldn't disclose anything she had discovered.

She told me she took the money, she needed it for her son's treatment.

But she didn't sign their silence agreement.

Instead, she quits her job and starts her own organization, the Center for Justice, Governance, and Environmental Action, a non-profit fighting for environmental justice.

She starts to look deeper into what's happening to people in a Winoahuru.

The most affected, of course, were children because they play in the soil.

We tested over 100 children, 90% of them tested positive for lead poisoning.

But also, the women paid the most severe consequences.

In getting to know the community, Phyllis meets a local woman, a 24-year-old newlywed, who is desperate to have children.

But every time she got pregnant, she would miscarry and miscarry.

She got five miscarriages.

Phyllis says she warned the woman to stop trying to get pregnant.

You have to stop because you have high lead levels in your body.

I think 272 micrograms of lead in her blood.

And I told her, it's not going to happen.

You have to stop.

And she kept insisting that she had faith that she could carry this child.

And eventually, things do go differently for her.

She carried her baby to Tam and she gave birth exactly one week after giving birth.

She died because her lead levels were too high.

Her blood could not pump her intestines.

She died.

She left her child.

I went to test him at birth.

He was born positive for lead poisoning.

Then Phyllis meets another woman.

She got pregnant.

The child died in her womb.

By the time we got her to hospital, her womb was completely destroyed because the child could not survive.

Her womb was removed, so she's unable to give birth ever again because of the high lead levels in her blood.

The true horrors of what's really happening around the factory are coming to light.

After the break, Phyllis takes her fight to a national level and raises all hell.

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Phyllis is horrified by what she has discovered around Metal Refinery's smelting factory in Owino, Uhuru.

Local people are struggling to breathe.

Children burned as they play.

Babies lost before birth.

Brand new mothers dying.

The levels of lead in their blood simply too high to survive.

She hears heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story.

These women deserved better than what they got from both the state and, you know, the corporation that set up shop.

One story in particular haunts Phyllis.

I'll tell you about the first time that I met Sami.

A local five-year-old boy she got to know.

I asked Sami in our Kenyan dialect, Swahili, I asked him, Sami, how are your loved ones?

Which is a normal greeting.

And Sami said, I don't love anyone.

I love you only.

And of course, I fell in love with

Sami at that point.

He had my total heart.

And from that time, I nicknamed him, I love you only in Swahili.

And I called Sami Niwe to, it's only you.

Sami's been breathing in lead particles every day of his young life.

The dust and smoke, what the locals call acid rain from the factory's chimneys, has burnt his skin so badly that it's literally peeling off.

He's in and out of hospital constantly.

And when Sami was hospitalized this time, I knew that it was a bit serious.

And after I finished my work, I had planned to see Sami, but I was not able to see Sami, so I went home.

And his mother called me at night and asked, are you going to be able to come and see Sami?

And I said, no, let me talk to Sami.

And I was on the phone and he asked, are you coming for me?

I said, yes.

Are you bringing the car to pick me?

And I said, yes, all you need to do for me is get better.

And I'll bring the car to pick you from the hospital.

And

I asked him, are you going to get better?

I said, yes, I'm going to get better.

So I said, okay, fine, you get better.

Tomorrow is another day.

I'll pass by and see you.

At 2 a.m., Phyllis gets a call from Sammy's mom.

I picked the call and I asked her, Catherine, are you okay?

Is Sami okay?

And she told me, Sammy has left us.

And I did not understand how Sammy has left us.

Yeah, I said, what do you mean, Sammy has left us?

She said, Sammy is gone.

Sammy is gone.

He's not breathing.

I told them, don't move him.

Don't move his body because I don't believe that Sammy has died.

Don't do anything until I get there.

So I drove and went to the hospital.

And

Sami was there on the bed, but Sami was gone.

Sammy was dead.

The acid from the chimneys had completely damaged his skin, so that at the point of death, Sami's skin was not able to hold on to his body.

If you touched him, the skin would come off.

So he died a very painful death.

There's nothing that anyone would have done to bring him back at that point.

In the midst of her grief, Phyllis tries to to get Sammy's medical files as evidence, but the hospital flat-out refuses.

Maybe one day we'll manage to get through maybe a court order or something to get Sammy's file out.

I hope you do.

Sammy sounds like a really wonderful little boy.

He was really cute.

I'll send you a picture afterwards.

Everything Phyllis sees in Owino Huru, every tragedy she witnesses, makes her more angry.

And the lack of concern from the company behind all the suffering just makes her more determined to act.

She starts writing letters.

First to Kenya's National Environmental Management Authority, NEMA.

I enclosed the results of the children that were sick and told them that something was critically wrong.

They needed to take a second look.

And the reaction, the first letter they wrote to me was that they were ready to defend themselves against any accusations that I brought against them and that they were not privy to what I was accusing them of.

And I wrote back and said, I'm not accusing you.

I'm telling you that children are falling sick and I've given you proof.

She writes to government officials, agencies, basically anyone who might listen.

Every single letter includes those devastating blood test results.

But the response,

crickets.

It's time to get the community involved.

At At first, I worked with the women mostly because they are the ones who

were

awake and alive to what was going on.

Unfortunately, most of the men were employed inside the smelter.

So when I started this, mostly it's the women that went with me.

It's the women that sat on the committees.

It is the women that, you know, worked with me that journey.

In 2012, Phyllis organizes a mass demonstration.

But things go very wrong.

So I was in the community you know mobilizing asking the women to come out some of the men also to join us the kids were playing and everything and then suddenly

there were loud bangs and there was police everywhere there was tear gas and they kept asking where is this woman where is this woman where is Phyllis and so I came out and said I'm here I'm here she does not expect what happens next They dragged me, they were pulling me and you know beating me.

I lost my shoes.

By the time they got me to the road from the community, I had no shoes.

They made me sit down

there and then they made me watch the most horrific scene in my life because they started going door to door, breaking the houses.

People in Owenohuru usually earn maybe two, three dollars a day.

barely enough for food and sustenance.

And the police go in and completely destroy all their belongings.

It's clearly designed to break Phyllis's spirit and send a message to anyone thinking of supporting her.

And they made me sit there for almost six hours as they did this.

And of course people ran away.

They fled because they had never seen anything like this.

And

so I was arrested together with 16 other community members.

Phyllis spends the night in a police cell.

When the morning comes, she discovers something heartwarming.

The entire community has spent the night sleeping outside the police station, waiting for her.

When the police take her to the courthouse the next morning, everyone follows.

And the courthouse was packed with members of the Onohuru community.

And

when they read my name, when the judge said

Felice Omido,

the environmental activist, and I accepted, yes, my name is Felice Omido.

I'm an environmental activist.

And that was the first time that I actually accepted my role as an environmental activist.

That's the moment Phyllis is no longer just a worried mum or a whistleblowing employee.

She's officially a thorn in the government side.

She starts community petitions and pushes those all the way to the Kenyan parliament.

Of course, the parliamentarians came.

from Nairobi, they came to the community, they did their own tests and they got very horrific results worse than what I got.

They They got up to 420 micrograms per deciliter of lead in blood.

Remember, the safe level is 3.5 for children.

This is 420.

So we wrote a petition to Parliament, and then we wrote a petition to the Senate.

They both came, did their own investigation, removed their own reports, but nobody was bothering within government how to get justice.

These smelters were still operating.

In fact, at that time, they had even licensed more smelters in Mombasa.

We had three smelters in Mombasa at that time.

All this noise is definitely getting attention.

Unfortunately, not the kind Phyllis was hoping for, because being labeled an activist has painted a big target on her back.

After the break, Phyllis has her closest call yet.

One evening, Phyllis is walking home from church with her young son.

It was getting a bit dark, and when I got home, as I was opening the gate, there were two men that were standing there.

So I just said hi, and I proceeded to open the gate.

I assumed maybe they were watchmen from the neighbors, or they're just passerbys,

but they moved close to me and they had guns.

And

I put my hands up like to surrender because this is what we see in the movies, and I'd never experienced something like this.

So I put my hands up, he hit me and said, Put your hands down.

So I put my hands down, and they started, you know, roughing me up.

One of them said, We are told you are standing up to men in this society.

And I said, No, I'm not standing up to any man.

I'm from church right now.

There's nothing I've done.

At first, Phyllis thinks maybe they just want to rob her.

But one hit me and said, You are very rude.

Said, you think you know too much.

You think you know too much.

That's why you are standing up to people in this society.

I realized then that these people are not thieves, eh?

They were not just armed robbers or something.

These people had been sent by someone to intimidate her for her activism

so i told them okay i'm here i promise you i'm not going to run i'm not going to do anything allow my son to go inside i'll stay here then you do whatever you want with me the two men start arguing with each other about what to do with her son i opened the gate pushed my son in, I locked it, and then I threw the key inside.

I think that even aggravated him more.

So he hit me and I fell now on the floor.

So my head was down and I could hear my son screaming and I was very afraid because I thought maybe they would shoot through the gate and shoot my son, you know.

And I kept trying to get their attention to me and not to my son.

I kept

trying to talk and, you know, telling them, I'm here, just you do whatever you want, leave my son alone.

And then, like something out of a movie, her neighbor's car pulls up.

The headlights hit the scene like a spotlight.

And he was, I think he was drunk at that that time.

And he was asking, Rama King, why are you sleeping?

Why are you on the floor?

You couldn't script it.

Phyllis's drunk neighbor stumbles onto the scene and scares the attackers off.

They ran and left us there.

And so I went inside.

I picked my son.

I told my neighbor, please, please drive me to my friend's place.

That night changes everything for Phyllis.

She packs up her life, takes her son, and leaves Mombasa for good.

All because she dared to speak up about children being poisoned.

And still, she says Metal Refinery, the international corporation behind all this suffering, won't listen.

The government won't act.

It's time for Plan B.

Phyllis and her team at the Centre for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action find another way to stop the factory.

They pressure the Kenyan government into passing a vital law.

A legislation that banned the export of lead and lead alloys because what they were doing was they were smelting and exporting pure lead out of the country.

So they were unable to export because then we got the port police to start impounding any containers containing lead leaving the port of Mombasa.

They flipped the whole argument.

Instead of stop poisoning people, it became stop exporting our precious resources and boom, boom, no more exports, no more business.

The police start to impound any containers with metal refinery products at the port, and this makes the company lose a lot of money.

So much so that the factory shuts down in 2014.

But Phyllis isn't done yet.

The court compelled them to pay 12 million US dollars in compensation compensation to the community and 7 million US dollars as finance for cleaning up the remediating the environment in Ounohuru.

Unfortunately, in 2021,

the government appealed against the judgment.

So we went to the court of appeal and we lost.

The court of appeal told us to go back and start the case afresh at the environment and land court.

But we knew that it was largely because of corruption, not because our case was weak.

So, we appealed to the Supreme Court.

And in December of 2024, we won the case at the Supreme Court and they reinstated the award that was given at the Environment and Land Court.

So, as we stand now, the government is supposed to pay the Oonohuru community.

As we're recording this, that money still hasn't reached the families in Owinohuru.

But Phyllis isn't giving up.

The work you've done has spanned such a long you know, span of time, and you've been fighting against a lot, and people have been fighting back against you.

Is there any particular moment that stands out as a real time where you thought, I've won?

Do you ever feel that?

Yes, the first time that metal refinery closed down, you know, we had tried many times.

NEMA would shut them down for a week, reopen, shut them down for a month, reopen.

So when we impounded their containers, when we got the police to impound their containers and they closed down by themselves,

that was the first time that we felt, hey, we are winning, maybe we are winning.

And that was a real victory for us.

Yeah, I bet.

And the court case, when you finally heard that verdict and it was a win, how did you feel then?

Of course, we celebrated.

I don't think we slept that night.

We were in the community the whole night, you know, just dancing and, you know, playing music.

Because for us, we didn't believe that we could get this far and that we would win this case.

And then we won.

Phyllis's journey is remarkable.

A single mother who started as an admin assistant just beat the government and six state agencies and two companies in court.

That's really David and Goliath territory.

Today, Phyllis is an internationally recognized environmental activist.

The metal refinery that poisoned her community, gone.

All thanks to her.

And it all started when she first saw Kelvin, that little boy who burned his foot from the lead deposits in the water.

Well, Kelvin is now in his final year of high school.

Still fighting, still moving forward.

Will you ever be able to rest?

I've been telling myself that that once the Unohuru community is compensated and we do a big memorial for Sami.

You know, Sami's mother died after that because she also had very high lead levels in her blood.

I've been telling myself that once we have compensated the community, that we have ensured that the community is remediated, maybe then I can consider resting.

But I'm not sure because there are many other challenges.

Thank you to Phyllis for telling us her incredible story.

You know, life isn't easy for her.

She still faces security threats from the powerful people she stands up to.

So I'm beyond grateful that she made time for this conversation.

If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed.

Do check them out.

And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us.

We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriends gang.

Next time on the Girlfriend Spotlight, Miss Sahara crowns queens.

I'm tall, I'm 5'11.

On heels, I'm 6'3.

But I really don't care.

This is who I am.

We all come into this world to contribute in one way or the other, and that makes us beautiful.

This season, we're supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide.

They do amazing work to help women's rights organisations and movements to strengthen and grow.

If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe, you can go to womankind.org.uk.

The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield.

This episode was written and produced by Al Shay Barney, with additional production and story finding by Maddie Hickish.

Our researcher is Zayana Yousuf.

The editor is Hannah Marshall.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers.

Production management from Joe Savage, Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson.

Music supervision by Jake Otayevich, Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield.

Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein and Gemma Freeman.

The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkule.

Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Special thanks to Katrina Norville, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME.

This Halloween season, there's only one place where thrills meet chills, and it's not your neighbor's haunted house.

It's Solitaire Clash, that's Solitaire CLASH, where spooky fun and big wins collide.

Crack the Halloween case files, uncover eerie surprises, and compete for real prizes.

Whether you're in costume or just craving a scare, Solitaire Clash brings all the fun and the fright.

Download Solitaire Clash, Solitaire CLASH in the App Store and Samsung Galaxy store today.

Don't ghost this chance to win.

Top Reasons Your Career Wants You to Move to Ohio.

So many amazing growth opportunities, high-paying jobs in technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering, life sciences, and more.

You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong.

Their careers all took off in Ohio, and yours can too.

A job that can take you further and a place you can't wait to come home to.

Have it all in the heart of it all.

Launch your search at callohiohome.com.

Toyota's all-in all-season with another year of Toyota Game Day giveaways.

The official automotive partner of the NFL is giving fans the chance to win epic prizes like Brock Purdy's favorite Toyota Sequoia, NFL Shop Gear, and more.

Play for free by predicting which big plays will happen during the second half of every Sunday night football game.

This is going to be fun.

Visit toyota.com/slash NFL now to learn more.

Toyota, let's go places.

No purchase necessary, void where prohibited.

Ends on 2826.

Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and DC, 18 and over.

For complete details, how to enter prizes and official rules, visit ToyotasGamedayGiveaways.com.

In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you.

Don't let them down.

Unlock Elite Gaming Tech at Lenovo.com.

Dominate every match with next-level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit.

So you can push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming.

Upgrade to smooth, high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking.

Win the tech search.

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Lenovo, Lenovo.

This is an iHeart podcast.