Solomon IslandsIt was mid-February 2018 when villagers in the Solomon Islands community of Marasa noticed the rivers had begun to turn red. The wet season was almost over and heavy rain fell over the forested mountain ridge, which rises up from the coast to split Marasa from the rest of the island of Guadalcanal. Soon, the waters were a thick rust color that everyone recognized as the soil that started 650 feet up the slopes, but had never dissolved and flowed out to sea before.

The rivers burst their banks not long after, flooding the flatland where the coconuts, mangoes, and yams grew, and laying down impermeable clay that made the earth unusable.

So the villagers walked to the little patches of cell