Turkana villagers compete with well-equipped miners for dwindling gold deposits

For the last 10 years, Simon Epirit has searching for precious stones more than 300 metres deep in the goldfields of Naduat village in Turkana.

Just like many residents, every day Mr Epirit burrows deeper with the hope of getting substantial gold deposits that could change his fortunes.

“Gold mining has been our main source of livelihood, but it is now turning deadly as we dig deeper for diminishing deposits,’’ said Mr Epirit.

Naduat, once known as ‘gold village’, attracted many precious stone hunters and traders from Europe and Asia, but few are now trickling in.

“The gold business has turned into a gambling game. Those with better detecting equipment are winners while we locals have to toil with crude weapons to access the minerals but later sell at a throwaway price,” said Esther Akal, a mother of one.

She withstands scorching sun armed with metallic basin, sulphuric acid and water to sieve the precious stones from mud.

The process can take the whole day before getting less than a gramme of gold which she sells to middlemen and other traders.

“I sell a gramme of gold for Sh2,100 to middlemen who eventually sell it at Sh4,500,” said Ms Akal.

Naduat gold miners have been in the mining business for almost 20 years after Lolupe gold mines were exhausted.

Other villages with gold deposits include Lomaguro, Atereka and Nakareareka. “We have no otherwise (sic) but to sell the raw gold at throw-away prices due to lack of clear market information,” said Eyangan Nangok, another miner.

James Awet, a gold merchant, has set up a shop at Naduat trading centre and sells to miners from as far as Tororo in Uganda.

Kobuin sub-chief Alfred Locham said despite the dismal returns, small-scale gold mining is the major economic activity in the village.

John Lomonyin, a miner, said the search for gold is a now turning into a tedious business that few people would want to undertake.

“It is a trial and error venture that has claimed many lives. About 200 miners died in 1994 after the tunnel caved in one of the fields,” he said.

Mr Lomonyin said that miners have to break the rocks suspected to be containing gold into smaller pieces, put them into sacks and carry them on their back, 400 metres up to the surface.

The rocks are broken into smaller stones which are then further crushed into granules. The granules are crushed into powder and the panning process begins using water. Soil and other impurities are washed, leaving the gold pellets at the base of the pan.

The miners say lack of proper mining equipment is denying them a chance to exploit proceeds from the lucrative business. Some use poly pipes laid into the tunnels to provide oxygen in the mines.

“I wish we had oxygen cylinders to go deep into the mining fields and extract the precious commodity,” said Mr Lomonyin.

Few of the miners have advanced metal detectors that search gold traces on the surface of the minefields.

“The machine is expensive. I spent Sh400,000 to acquire it but I can earn up to Sh100,000 every week from the gold I get if it’s my lucky day,’’ said Paul Long’oli.

The portable machine with a detector uses battery to detect the presence of a metal at a particular spot and sends a signal to the headphones.

The miner then zeros in on that spot and picks the metal. The miners are optimistic that the county and national governments will come up with legislation that will safeguard them from exploitation from the rogue traders.