Because of the high price of the yellow metal
The search for gold in the mines is a haven from poverty for thousands of families in West Africa
Those working in gold prospecting do not receive a fixed salary, but rather a share of what they find.
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Bakri Jammeh gave up going to Italy in order to prospect for gold in Senegal.
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The area along the Gambia River is teeming with gold miners from all over West Africa. Most of these were former farmers and poor people who came here with the aim of collecting money and changing their lives for the better. Villages like Bantakou, turned into large settlements with thousands of people, I grew up in Souks selling everything related to excavation such as axes, helmets and even drinks, in addition to daily necessities.
During a stopover in Mali on his way to Libya, African man Bakri Jammeh abandoned his plans to board the ship and travel to Italy, where his brother lives, and Jammeh decided he had to postpone his reunion with his brother and go back in search of gold.
What contributed to Jammeh's change of opinion was his meeting with a Senegalese who was able to obtain about 15 grams of gold through prospecting.
This man is a citizen of the city of Kidogo in southeastern Senegal, where villages, with ancient traditions, went to search for gold, and turned into sprawling cities dotted with mines.
But great fortunes are rare to find, and Jammeh, who is originally from Gambia, has been searching for it for 15 years after giving up oil drilling in the cleared areas of Bantakou village.
Most miners can go several weeks or even months without obtaining only very small pieces of gold, which can help them buy food for a few weeks while they are engaged in this work, and these discoveries of gold rarely help to get rid of poverty comprehensively.
Jammeh's good luck once led him to obtain 85 grams of gold, after which he immediately traveled to his country and presented it to his mother.
Jameh works as head of a gold prospecting group, spends his day under a tent of plastic cloth to protect him from the rain, and supervises a well-organized work routine, which is represented by young men digging a hole up to 15 meters deep to break the rocks below, and packing them in rice bags that Reused over and over again, they are pulled upwards by a team of men using giant rollers.
It is unloaded next to the place of excavation, and the working women specialize in crushing pieces of rock into smaller pieces, and then grinding them into small pieces through which it is easy to find pieces of gold.
None of these workers gets a fixed salary, and a part of these small rocks is given to the person who founded the place of excavation, his assistants, and the head of the exploration group, and the rest is distributed among the workers who extract these rocks and take them home in the hope of finding any amount of gold inside to sell it.
"Survival depends on how the team works together, that is, the staff members support each other and distribute the shares among them fairly," Jameh says.
He adds, “You can live and survive based on what you find, and if you have a good group leader, all the workers will live a good and happy life.
Of course we are all suffering here, as there is no food or water, and no one will come to give us money to buy water, but we can survive by sharing what we have.”
The city of Kedougou has been famous for its gold prospecting for nearly 2,000 years, as the newly mined companies have arrived in the area, and the government has encouraged these companies to invest.
In the past, gold prospecting was a way to support the incomes of prospectors, but the rise in gold prices encouraged poor farmers to rely on the search for gold as their livelihood, especially those who came from outside the country.
The mines work almost continuously from morning until midnight, and workers work two shifts a day.
They leave Bantakou for their homes for only a few weeks to spend holidays and religious occasions, or when it is not possible to work due to heavy rains, which flood the place with water.
"There is no solidarity between people here, everyone is selfish, and if you have money, your life will be good and comfortable, but if you do not have money, you will face great difficulties," says Hua Cisse, who arrived in Bantakou village with her husband in 2012. The thing to do is to take these rocks and try to find some gold, even if the amount of gold is very small, it will help you keep going.” But life is very difficult back home too, so there is no way to go back there, and you cannot work in Anything to earn a living.
But if I get some money here, I will go back and start my own business.”
In the mines, the noise caused by the blows of axes cutting rocks and the buzzing of the belts of the grinding machines’ engines continues, and the men who run these machines work in an atmosphere of continuous dust clouds inside tin workshops that contain many barrels filled with dangerous chemicals such as mercury used to speed up the process of separating gold from rocks.
According to Dakar-based researcher at the Senegalese Institute for Security Studies Pauline Maurice Toubani, 3.9 tons of mercury are used to mine gold in the village of Kidogo every year, which contributes to the deterioration of the miners' health.
Mercury can cause health problems such as muscle weakness, poor vision and hearing problems.
Toubani says that although gold brings important income to the region, as about 4.2 tons of gold were produced, worth about 86.6 billion Senegalese francs, equivalent to 111 million pounds in 2018, it leads to increased desertification and soil loss, and puts security Food is at risk.
He added, "The local community has abandoned the culture of fishing in order to participate in manual gold mining, and this leads to endangering food security, and there is a relationship for this type of gold mining with human smuggling, as well as drugs and sometimes violence." He says that this gold mining It should be regulated and subjected more to government investment.
At this time, Jammeh believes the mines will continue to grow, given that more people come to work in them than they leave.
Jammeh says the workers here are not satisfied with what they are getting.
“No one says he has enough.
Some say he has long wanted to leave, but he still needs more gold.”
Some say he has 1,000, but he wants 2,000. Others say we have 2,000, but we want 4,000, and no one is satisfied with what he has. "It's human nature."
Jammeh believes that “there are many people who own a lot here, but they do not know how to behave with what they own well. Instead of building a house in their homeland, they buy a motorcycle, and resort to satisfying their personal pleasures until this money evaporates, so they sell the motorcycle and start from scratch.”
• Villages such as Bantakou turned into large settlements in which thousands of people live, where markets have emerged selling everything related to excavation such as axes and helmets.
• The city of Kedougou has been famous for its gold prospecting for nearly 2000 years, as the newly mining companies have arrived in the area, and the government has encouraged these companies to invest.
Bad Effects of Mercury Used in Prospecting
Mercury is used in prospecting, separating gold ores from soil, and other deposits primitively in Senegal and many Third World countries, without using adequate protective equipment to protect workers or the environment around the place of exploration.
This process results in the dispersal of large amounts of mercury in the environment or in the soil and water near the place of exploration.
The newly obtained information has raised a lot of concern because it states that villagers can be exposed to mercury risk not only by eating fish that live in mercury-contaminated streams but also by eating crops grown on contaminated land, and children are also exposed while playing with dirt. contaminated with mercury.
The mercury used in exploration leads to harmful effects on workers and the environment. archival
Women work in prospecting
Given that gold prospecting in West Africa is done by using primitive techniques that require a lot of labor, so women are employed in large numbers in this field, where they perform various tasks such as crushing the rocks that are collected to break them up and taking out gold pieces from them, and collecting water, in addition to to being responsible for the work of preparing food for the workers.
However, women working in the field of gold prospecting usually do not receive equal shares with the rest and do not participate in the development of plans for exploration and exploration, or even the search for new sites.
Given the use of primitive methods in prospecting for gold, such as crushing the rocks that are extracted, women are exposed for long periods to harmful silica dust, which causes them respiratory diseases, such as chronic bronchitis, in addition to tuberculosis.
Women are skilled in jobs that require precision, such as searching for gold.
Women working in gold prospecting are afraid of unemployment or not finding rocks that contain gold, which deprives them of the only source of income on which they depend for spending.
Maria Dow, who works in the field of gold prospecting, says, “We help men wash the rocks that contain gold, and we always benefit from obtaining the remains of pebbles that contain gold, as we usually find some gold in them, which we use as income.”
Women work in rock crushing to search for gold. archival
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