Gift in Gold

Before going to Burkina last year I read everything and anything I could get my hands on about it. Travel books, blogs and government websites became my reading material of choice. Several sites noted that in the province of Passoré (in which Yako is located) there are many gold mines. If possible, they suggested, speak with local chiefs in the area to arrange a visit.

So when the opportunity arose to have a guided tour of a local mine I took it! We were in the village searching for a family and the man helping us offered to take me to the mines. We set out: him on his mobilette and me on the back of a moto, although once close enough we walked the rest on foot. I had no expectations: it seemed impossible to prepare myself in the few minutes it took for us to find the miners that morning.
My guide called out information to me as we walked and panicked when I walked too close to a shaft. I smiled, stepping away and he let me come closer to look down. I couldn’t see anything but dirt and dark...He pointed out deep grooves in the packed dirt: “steps to climb out” he said and I nodded.

I watched the faces of the young men riding their bikes back towards the village for sieste. Their faces were tinted orange from working the ground, and hands coated white in something they’d dug up. The landscape around me was a shocking chalky-white in contrast to the burnt red I had grown accustomed to.

Of the miners we met there was a woman who didn’t want her photo taken but let me watch as she laboriously worked at the hard earth to start a new hole.

There was a man who showed me the gold he’d found that morning. I feared if I breathed too hard it might disappear (picture to the right- you can expand all the pictures by clicking on them) and he admitted the days and days of work it had taken him to get would pay him less than 1$.

And the children: it was them I was least prepared to meet in such a context. At home in Canada the extent of their labour might be shoveling a neighbours driveway but, here they anxiously climbed down their mine shaft to show me how far they had dug. I stood at the top trying to smile to show them they were doing a good job, but behind the smile I did nothing but pray for their safety. As we watched them climb down my guide took to telling me about how dangerous the shafts are and how often they

collapse. I nodded and listened, secretly wanting to ask if he could wait until they were safely up before telling me. 'Men, women (often with a baby tied to their back) and children die when the earth they are mining tumbles in around them' he explained to me. We had passed their graves on the way to the mine.

We left the same way we came, stopping at the fork in the road where our guide was to go left and we would turn right towards Yako. We turned off our engines to sit and chat. He was engaging and I was sorry he cut the conversation short because he was concerned about me being out in the sun for so long. He told me of his time in the Navy (Cote D’Ivoire) and the places he’d seen around the world. He talked of Europe: the people he’d met and what he’d learned of life.

We'd uprooted him from a morning with his friends under a baobab sipping millet beer. He'd spent hours working with us to find a family and then toured me through the mines. This man, tatooed and wrinkled, smiling at us from his little blue mobilette was Burkinabé in every sense of the word: the interruption was no interruption at all to him. I offered him money for taking me to the mines. He rejected my offer explaining that I was Burkinabé and he couldn't accept it from me because of it 'and regardless this is what we do for our sisters' he exclaimed.

At first I struggled to class this experience at the mines because it couldn't be classed. What was it to me I thought? It was eye opening and heartbreaking yet it was beautiful and real. It is was a glimpse of Africa and of Burkina. It was a gift.