Thousands are lured to the Kédougou region by dreams of riches hidden underground. Fortunes rarely materialise, but still the pickaxes fall, night and day
n a stopover in Mali on his way to Libya, Bakary Jammeh abandoned plans to board a boat to Italy. He had a brother there, but Jammeh became convinced he should put their reunion on hold and turn back in search of gold.
Top: Bantako, in south-east Senegal. Centre left: A busy street in Bantako, where the population has grown as people come to look for gold. Centre right: Miners on their way to work in the artisanal gold mining camps around the town. Bottom: Miners assemble around the makeshift buildings of the camp before going to work
Each haul is dumped on top of a pile that towers over the pits. Women are assigned to crush them into smaller pieces, and machines grind them down still further, making it easier to hunt for a glint of gold.No one takes a salary – a share of the rocks is given to the mining site’s founder, his assistants and the pit’s chief, and the rest is split between the workers, who break them up at home in the hope they can find something to sell.
“You survive from what you find here. If you have a good leader, every worker here will enjoy [life]. It depends on your heart. We can all suffer here, with no food, no water, nobody to come and give us five coins to buy some water, but we can survive [by sharing] from our pockets,” he says. Clockwise from top left: Sediment, dug tens of metres below ground, is hauled up to the surface using pulleys; Ibrahim goes down a mine shaft; a miner splits open a rock in the hope of finding tiny gold deposits within its layers; miners haul sacks of rock to the surface.
Driven by poverty, families come from all over west Africa to Bantako in the hope of earning a living from gold
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