Mining in Ghana

The last few weeks here has been very interesting. Unfortunately, internet has been really slow, so I haven't had a chance to upload any photos or messages.. but its working this morning.. so I am going to try.

I was able to join CIKOD on a Learning Exchange Program with a few government officials in the north who wanted to learn about gold mining and how it affects the local communities. Gold was recently discovered outside of Wa, and a company who has been granted rights to it, will start its operation in 2012. I got to meet with Chiefs, government officials, and the company representatives and learn about the challenges they have had with the whole operation. It seems property rights were the biggest challenge, as they are often unknown. We also joined a mining tour to see the open pits and the cyanide ponds, which were all up to western safety standards. The most interesting aspect of it was an illegal mining area, which were were lucky to be invited into. The mining company owns the land, but lets locals mine it themselves, I guess to avoid some conflict. However, they take no responsibilities for the health and environmental safety of the people working there. Its hard to even describe what I saw, whole families were working there, using mercury to extract the gold from the crushed rocks (because most of the gold is in microscopic pieces), men worked underground for days at a time, and only came up to eat and use the washroom. They estimated that 4000 men were working underground when we were there, but there was no way to know for sure, as no one keeps records. We felt and heard explosions under our feet, so they could open up the mine more. I believe there were multiple mines, but again very hard to tell unless we went down them ourselves. We also met with the 'gold lords' who ran the show: the men with the money to supply the equipment, settled any disputes that came up, and told people were and when they could work. It felt surreal, more like a scene from Blood Diamond or something, except no guns, only the promise of making enough money to get out of it. Apparently a lot of gold has already been discovered there, but the way they are destroying their environment and might be getting sick and maybe even killed through exposure heavy metals or by preventable accidents in the mine made me feel sick to have a piece of gold around my neck.

Below are a few photos of the people we met there, the overall site, and one of the many mine entrance holes.