Gold panning attracts Guineans from all regions, but also well beyond the country’s borders, with a promise that is not always kept: to quickly improve living conditions.
From our special correspondent in Dabola,
In the courtyard of a hotel in Dabola, in the center of the Guineaenthroned three motorcycles of the Indian brand low-cost TVS. Covered with transparent tarpaulins, they are carefully packed like fragile objects during a move. Their owners want to protect them from dust. This red earth that infiltrates everywhere. On these 125 cubic centimeters, which are very uncomfortable for long distances, young drivers travel the country to reach the various gold panning sites that dot Guinea. According to the Ministry of Mines, the country has potential reserves estimated at 700 tons of gold. The extraction sites are mainly concentrated in the center and the northeast, but they are also found in the Kounsitel region, near the border with Senegal, where the discovery of the precious metal caused, in the spring of 2021, a rush on the area. Thousands of people quickly disembarked, shoveling and panning under their arms.
His pair of rangers gives him an adventurous look. One of the boys straps a huge shopping bag tightly to the back of his motorbike. Gestures are quick, betray habit. Next, his passenger leaves traces of lipstick by pulling on the filter of his cigarette. A silent spectator so far, a hotel employee takes advantage of their departure to finally open his jaw: It is only God who saves. You see little girls who smoke, abandon their families and throw themselves across the country into delinquency, who get drunk… »
In hotels, on the road, gold diggers are visible everywhere in Dabola and its surroundings. Those whom the employee allows himself to judge are also those who fill the rooms of the establishment where he works, those who allow him to receive his salary at the end of the month. The local economy benefits greatly from gold mining, as in Wassaya, a village 200 kilometers from Dabola, near the town of Kouroussa.
dangerous job
” You don’t find small denominations here, only 5,000 bills [un peu plus de 50 centimes d’euro, NDLR]. Everything is expensive. Doliprane costs twice the normal price “says a resident of the region. The mines are narrow shafts ten meters deep, which then extend into galleries where sunlight never pierces the darkness.
You have to go deep underground to follow the vein, explains Lanfia, 42, a gold miner whose every corner of his skin and clothes are covered with a thin white film. The men spend their day filling baskets. Attached to ropes, they are then brought to the surface by women, most often. They carry the heavy loads on their heads and slalom with agonizing dexterity between the vertiginous holes to the place where the earth is washed in order to extract the gold flakes.
In recent months, accidents have followed one another in this type of mine in Guinea. A landslide killed at least ten people on March 1 in Kounsitel. ” It’s been six, seven years since there’s been a fatal accident here, tempers the miner. The latest was caused by alcohol. A hole had become dangerous. A man stayed behind after work, he was drunk. He saw that there was some gold and he wanted to go down. He stayed there, the one who accompanied him lost his leg. »
Before, Lanfia was a driver and if he could return to his old job, he would gladly do so. ” This work is dangerous, it is very difficult. This is my last hope for survival. ” He can do “ two months, three months without winning anything and ending up hitting the jackpot. Pocket several hundred euros in just a few days of work.
Sums that have attracted poor populations from all over the sub-region to the mines. If the locals are largely involved in artisanal or semi-industrial mining, on the gold panning sites, it is easy to come across Guineans from other regions, but also nationals of other countries, Burkina Faso, Senegal, from Côte d’Ivoire… Everyone hopes if not to make a fortune, at least to improve their living conditions, to put money aside for a project.
Whether ” go on an adventure “, as the Guineans say, promotes the emancipation of a segment of the youth, it can also cause brutal ruptures within families. The social consequences are then very heavy. ” Young people leave overnight, leave their loved ones and cut ties, because the latter do not want to see them work in this field explains a young Conakryka from the forest. In a village in Upper Guinea, a resident tells the story of a mother who abandoned husband and child to go look for gold. The yellow metal has a sulphurous reputation. In the minds of many Guineans, the gold-bearing areas would be dangerous. A xenophobic discourse is expressed: foreigners have caused the crime rate to explode. The women who frequent these regions are systematically suspected of prostitution.
deserted fields
200 kilometers further north, you enter Siguiri in a cloud of dust, a sign of intense mining activity. A crossroads city, the last urban center before the Malian border, its economy is partly based on trade. Its other source of income is gold, renowned for its quality and exploited since the Middle Ages, at least. ” The gold that made the empire of Mali so rich is the gold of Bouré de Siguiri “Reminds RFI of history professor Mamadou Dindé, vice-rector in charge of research at the Julius Nyerere University of Kankan.
The landscape has not always been so dry and desert. There was a time when forests and rice fields stretched as far as the eye could see. It all changed in the early 2010s when people started mining. Siguiri then finds himself at the heart of a gold rush, recalls a young man from the city, a geology graduate, but who has never found a job related to his training. “ So far, the state has not been able to control them. The population has abandoned agriculture in favor of the more lucrative gold panning. ” She left her fields. I remember, during my childhood, we all went to cultivate rice. The chaotic development of the sector, which is accompanied by an unreasonable use of water in particular, implies a rapid destruction of the environment. ” Gold diggers use mercury, industrial mines use cyanide and many other products that are very harmful to the body and pollute nature. There is also the problem of deforestation. Education is also suffering. Child labor, very common in the mines, kept young Guineans away from school.
Friday is the day for selling gold at the Siguiri market. Kadiatou*, 22, came to exchange two grams, the fruit of a day’s work at the mine. She retrieves a wad of banknotes which she hastens to recount. She obtained just over 950,000 Guinean francs, the equivalent of around 100 euros, which she will share with her father and mother. What remains will allow him to pay for his schooling. She does not want to work in gold panning all her life. She wants to become a technical health officer (ATS).
With her, we go to visit the mines of Bouré Doubaya, a village about twenty kilometers north of Siguiri. Here, the extraction is less risky, no galleries, the earth is cleared with a bulldozer before being cleaned. This task is no less painful. Water up to her knees, in full sun, Kadiatou’s mother waves her pan, following circular movements, above a small pool. Before coming here, she sold clothes in town, but many customers asked for credit and it was often difficult to get paid. ” There is nothing else to do in Siguiri. Children, women, men, that’s what everyone does “, blows this owner of a small informal and semi-industrial gold panning company which has machines and employs four employees.
Crossed a few meters further, a 24-year-old Burkinabè, in Guinea to pay for his medical school in Morocco. ” It is the lack of means that brings students to the gold mines “, he assures. Living conditions are spartan. He sleeps there, under the stars, with his friend. The ” camp comes down to a tarp and the black marks of the previous night’s fire. ” The freshness is a little intense “, he says with a smile. ” Above all, the most important thing is courage. To be able to work here, he must pay 200,000 Guinean francs, a little more than 20 euros, every week to “ village people “. But they are not the only ones to benefit from this rent, the security forces also take their share, when leaving the country in particular, affirms the young man. “ At the border [entre la Guinée et le Mali], if you are Burkinabè, we catch you and ask you to pay. When you show all the papers, you are told: “No need for papers, it’s the money we want”. He would have already been forced to give 2 million Guinean francs, the equivalent of 200 euros, to cross.
But he is not safe in Bouré Doubaya either. He lives in fear of having his equipment seized or of being arrested by the military, even if a certain solidarity is expressed. Locals sometimes warn strangers when they know a raid by the authorities is about to take place. The young man gives himself a few months before returning to Burkina Faso with a little money, just enough to continue his studies, he hopes.