An experience in Kedougou - Senegal

A Blog should be a diary where you write your experiences or where you can share ideas and even information. After many years I decided to start rewriting about my studies, my experiences and the trips I have always made for the love of my profession , which, to this day, continually moves the levers of my curiosity.
My gemological studies were carried out thanks to my friend and professor of gemology Dr. Costantini and his wife who, in addition to teaching me a lot, had great patience in sharing her life experiences which I still remember with great affection.

The trips come by themselves, sometimes planned at the table, sometimes as opportunities that I do not know how to miss. Testimony of what it is as a mere scrutinizer without having to make any consideration or forced reasoning that is done anyway in one's own heart. I thank the companions of each trip and the friends in the various countries who even after years lend themselves to organizing the trip with care.

A journey along the gold road

We left by plane from Bologna with a stop in Casablanca to get off in Dakar at 1.50 in the morning, two hours of extra time difference and significant humidity welcomed us at the Léopold Sedar Senghor airport.......with clouds of mosquitoes ready for the morning breakfast.

The trip has been prepared for a long time, 4x4 car, air conditioning, expert driver and of course the person who will be our tutor, the one who is recognized as "the one who can" go into certain villages. A couple of days are enough to say goodbye to friends and acquaintances, one suitcase per person is enough for 3 days, 2 of travel and 1 of meetings. Our tutor does not want us to stay too long, situations could arise that are sometimes not manageable in a civil manner.

So off we go, 6 am we go. Direction Kaolack and then turn towards Tambacounda and cross the Niokolo Koba National Park and as a last stop Kédougou . We arrive after 13 hours on the road, worn out by the heat and tiredness, aware of having seen so many things in such a short time. Four stops, every 200 km just to satisfy primary needs, clean the sand that sticks to the windshield of the car, fight with flies and mosquitoes, be amazed (because even after 100 times) when you see buses or cars that have double, if not triple, the height of the vehicle itself on the hood... sometimes with a goat and a person lying on top of everything!

Every stage is a chapter in itself, every moment leaves its why. Get used to having what you need at hand, when it's not there, the art of making do must be there to give you a hand. So as with every trip I bring with me what is most useful to me, useful also to ingratiate myself at the moment or repay me for a kindness. Thus, it can happen to exchange a sealed bottle of water for a favor received or give a baguette of bread to a swarm of kids so that they look at the car without touching it.

The last 200 km we do through the Niokolo Koba National Park the road seems like a ribbon that cuts in two, at a height of one meter, the low forest. Warthogs and monkeys are the masters, some small gazelles in the thicket can be seen in the distance.

We get off halfway, it's 47 degrees and the trucks with red license plates drive incessantly along this road. They are truck drivers from Mali, they say they are the best in Africa, they tell legends about them bordering on the unbelievable. They drive back and forth between Mali and Senegal on the road that has potholes in which a car gets lost. In fact we choose to drive along the track that is at the side of the road and at 7 pm we find ourselves in front of the city of Kédougou.

Taking a shower, drinking almost fresh water (the bottles were burning hot in the car) and lying down is priceless... as a famous advert says! At 9pm, appointment with our tutor who explains to us that there is no certainty about what they will allow us to see. It depends on us. If they feel confident, they will let us go to their village, otherwise we go back. Excellent!

Over the years I have developed a sense that has led me to resolve sometimes adverse situations, I bring it out, I use it to the fullest.... it's silence!
We are in the presence of a boy who comes from the village, he will evaluate. Our tutor speaks, we introduce ourselves and offer a coke (this also sometimes helps) and every now and then I smile, every now and then I nod my head, every now and then I make a noise with my glottis as a sign of understanding ..... come on, it's done.

11.00 am: We have been waiting for the boy for 3 hours, we can't see anything on the horizon except the heat which is increasing visibly.
A (Chinese) motorbike arriving with 2 people, the boy gets off, gets into the car and the motorbike starts again. We also leave, over 70 km towards nowhere in the direction of Mali.

The village appears both on the right and left of the road. On the horizon the mountain from where they dig tunnels to remove the rock that will then be worked in the village welcomes us. Barren and red. Living conditions for us Westerners unthinkable to face, village made of branches and wooden structures, plastic sheets, intertwining of fronds and beaten earth. Inside the huts carpets or mats, there is no water and no electricity. Everything is done at the river that is 2/3 km away and for electricity those who can afford it, solve with a photovoltaic panel where the telephone and a radio have supremacy over everything.

Women work on the search for metal as well as at home or taking care of the children. Men usually dig, transport and exchange goods and merchandise. The village is not organized as a single structure, but each family has its own hut and cleans and organizes the adjacent space, without a particular logic. On the sides of the road there are many sales structures such as shops, from food to clothing to work material. Everything is sold or exchanged.

Even the work at first glance is not structured in an organized way, but it works because each family in each hut has its own space adapted to the work, that is, to search for gold.

The gold is found in the mountain behind the village or on the sand, so from excavated material (mountain) or from alluvial material (sand), but the river is also dredged to collect the flakes.
The disorganized organization means that teams have been formed that work only on excavating the mountain, continuously removing rock material all day long that other teams put into large bags and, other teams, transport down the mountain to the village where, once ground, it is put back into other bags to be purchased by the prospectors who take them home for the work they will have to do on a wooden slide covered with a kind of carpet. The slide is placed on a bin (old oil drums) full of water.
Water is also purchased, stored in the center of the village in 25-liter tanks. At the top of the tank they place a plastic colander with this ground material inside and throw the water in. The water removes the ground rock and deposits the small particles of gold on the bottom, which will then be collected with skill and with the help of white mercury and fused together. Not exactly a healthy treatment for those who practice it.

We meet Mr. Dj who is responsible for the artisan miners of this village that has about 3000 people. He explains to us that 70/80% of what comes out of their work is sold outside the local market. They take it to Mali, which is 40 km away and they have no transport problems. On the contrary, if they were to take it to Dakar, as some sometimes dare to do, the risk becomes very high. He tells us that a miner was robbed on a bus of 50 grams of metal. Dj is a very careful person and weighs what he says. The entire region extracts about 3000 kg per year and only 500/600 kg of product will be sold in Senegal. He has managed to involve 17 groups of women who work the sieve. Each village has about 200 hectares of autonomous territory.

He signals to me that I can take it back, asks me if I want to see the samples, tells me that he doesn't want faces to be seen if the person doesn't allow it....don't steal the image. Sign of respect and authority.
The images will speak for themselves. Mrs. Anta, who took us into custody later, speaks three local dialects perfectly, French of course, since they were a colony of France, and an English that you would not expect. She is from Mali, she is 55 years old and lived for 35 years in Brussels where she worked with her husband in a cleaning company. Her husband died, everything died. She has family in Mali where she still sends the money she earns. There now, in that camp, she has everything she needs. She tells us that if it were not like this, she would have already died of hunger.
She takes us into her house, divided into a living area and a sleeping area, she shows us how she works and that in the bags full of earth that she has bought there is certainly gold. Anta is a proud person, she even offers us a Coke and tells us that it is a lot of work, but that in Europe things were worse. She had no contact with the world outside of work. I believe her, it is a concept that I have heard very often in these years. TV shows what is not. The illusion is strong. I repay her with a roll of absorbent paper, she dries her face, she smiles at me from side to side. She appreciated it. It smells clean, different, white. She carries it around with the delicacy one uses with a child.

We return to the car, still 47 degrees, still 70 km for the long-awaited shower. In the evening other people arrive, they want to know the reason for our visit. They are part of a para-state organization, projects that concern the safety of people who work in the metal extraction sector. Safety on how to manage a trade that, if it were organized scrupulously, would bring many benefits to the area. We sit down and listen. There are three types of settlements. The industrial one, organized and sealed. The rural artisan one, which has always existed, organized in the villages of the local inhabitants and regulated by the elders. Finally the artisan one, which is born thanks to the agglomeration of people who come from everywhere, often without any document and without history, regulated hopefully by common sense.

Finally morning, we leave the bungalow where the air conditioning has graced us, at night it is still 35 degrees. The word has spread, other people ask about us, they are sitting and waiting patiently. They talk to the tutor, ask what we have to offer, what we came to do, they want to know if we are buyers or adventurers. They tell us about when years ago a white man worked as a buyer gaining their trust. Misplaced since he had some metal delivered to him and they never saw him again. 6 months of work of an entire village stolen. They no longer had the money to buy the essentials for survival.
It's the same world, whites don't trust blacks, blacks don't trust whites. The tutor advises to leave, we have already met the good people, as he calls them. There is no point in meeting the bad ones!

800 km back, with a mountain behind us that holds in its belly a metal that, to tell the truth, provides every day the necessary for the survival of entire villages. Contrasting feelings and judgments that clash continuously on the animated discussions that we have on the way back, between the terrible working conditions that we Europeans do not accept, and their way of seeing life.

Maybe that's the difference. For them, it's just survival.