Ghana may have been the Gold Coast but Burkina sure seems to have a lot of gold these days as well. There are two small gold mines near my village that I have been hearing about since I arrived but was only able to first visit last fall. Since then I have gone back a few times and am fascinated by it. Many people have told me that around 2006 when the mines were at their peak, there were about 15,000 people living there, three times as many people as in my village. It has greatly decreased in size and I really am not sure how many people are there now; my guess is one or two thousand though the population is very transient so frequently changes. Most of the inhabitants are Mossi (a different ethnic group from my community) and are not from nearby. There are some folks from our area that move out there for an opportunity to strike it rich or to offer services to this population though such as small restaurants and boutiques.
The gold mines are within the area covered by my health center so folks living there will come into village for services as well as coming our market. Of course the gold has brought some wealth but more than this I think it has created many problems in the community. My family has fields near the gold mine and said that several years ago there were lots of issues with animals and crops disappearing. Another issue is that there are many young men living alone at the gold mine, either single or away from their wives, and so prositition is a problem. Prostition among a mobile population can lead to an increased tranmission of HIV/AIDS and we have seen a few cases of women from my village that are known to hang out at the gold mine that have tested positive.
This is the information I knew about the gold mine before going but I really wasn't sure what to expect. The first time I visited was with my major during a tetanus vaccination campaign. I was shocked at how temporary the area looked considering people had been living there at least 4 years. In most villages here, homes are made of mud or cement bricks but at the gold mine, houses were more like lean-tos made from woven straw and plastic sheets. It is a lot like I imagine a refugee camp. The first visit was very short since we had a lot of work to do in other villages as well and I didn't get to look around much.
I then biked out to the gold mine in December with my friend and her niece, a university student on break. She had made dolo and wanted to sell it out there so I was happy to go along. Most of the day was spent sitting under a tree talking to the folks that were taking a break from their work to enjoy a calabash of dolo but I also had a chance to walk around and see the process used to extract gold. I need to first admit to everyone that I really have no clue how this works and how a rock becomes the gold earrings someone makes. On my little "tour" everything was translated from Bissa and Moore to French for me so I know there was a lot being explained that I didn't catch.
Basically what is done though is that lots of pits are dug out in the bush and they take rocks from the pits and then break them up into smaller rocks and eventually into small pebbles which are mixed with water to a make a sludge which is then filtered out to find the gold that is left behind. This is then mixed with mercury to become gold. Or something like that. I'm sure others could explain better but it was these multiple steps that I saw. Once they have flakes of gold, they have a small balance scale to weigh it against the weight of one or a few matches or a 1 CFA coin. The gold is then taken to Ouaga to be sold and shipped.
I made another trip to the gold mine last week when my friend Yoshi visited. I had told her about my experiences there so she was curious to see. This was my first time going alone and unfortunately I couldn't remember exactly which dirt path to take. We ended up very lost in the bush and even when we ran into someone, nobody spoke any French or understand what we were looking for. We did eventually the gold mine but we were definetly on a treasure hunt up until then. By the time we found the gold at the end of one small dirt road, we felt like we had found the jackpot even if we couldn't keep any of the gold!
I hope to continue going out to the gold mine and maybe even trying to do some programs and sensibilizations since I think there is a need for increased health education among this population.
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