CAFOD blog

Jump to Comments

OK it only took four hours but that’s still an average speed of 15mph. And Abbe Alfred told us as we squashed into the back of the truck that the road had been much improved in the past few months.

As we bounced and bumped our way out of Bunia and up the dirt road to Mongbwalu, DR Congo started to unfurl in front of us. The earth is so very red and friable and in it grows mango and avocado and baobab.

Through the roadside smallholdings of maize and manioc, we caught glimpses of round thatched huts and then the families who lived in them.

Ituri’s lush hills rose on either side of us with small patchworks of crops, and women walked along the road with green bananas balanced on their heads.

Driving the truck, our Caritas colleague Roger expertly navigated the huge and randomly dangerous rocks that thrust up from the surface of the road. To avoid these we often turned deep into ruts full of water, wheel-spinning our way out after several goes.

Slowly the huts became iron-roofed and a small shantytown sprang up along the side of the road jammed with people and buildings. Pots and pans hung from shop kiosks and young men walked the main street with legs and arms the colour of the earth.

These were the first artisanal (small-scale) miners I had seen. Iga-Barriere is a mining town that sprouted from the first gold worker migrations in the 1980s when President Mobuto liberalised the gold laws.

Prior to this it was forbidden for anyone without a licence to dig for gold. Mobuto changed that and thousands arrived in Ituri in the hope of making their fortunes.

Iga-Barriere and many mining towns like it swell and shrink as new gold is discovered. Some people decide to stay after the first migrations and build permanent homes and worked outside mining.

But many come and go with the gold and there is often overcrowding in the make-shift homes of itinerant workers. The children of these families often fall through the educational net and move on before they get enrolled in school.

Plus, the ebb and flow of migrant workers can bring with it a variety of social issues such as prostitution and an increase in the cases of HIV and AIDS.

Through the town and the red earth loomed up like a wound. On the side of the Nizi River, some 30 miles from Mongbwalu, artisanal miners were digging and panning for gold.

The banks of the river had been scraped and sifted high up into the vegetation and the water was the colour of rust. In the small crowd a couple of women also mined and when I looked hard at my photographs later in the evening I saw that some of the men couldn’t have been much beyond their mid-teens.

These people and tens of thousands like them on the 10,000km² of Concession 40 search for gold every day. And when they are lucky enough to find some they can go to one of their local “comptoirs” (middlemen) who will pay them for the find.

Gold prices have been rising recently with the world markets selling at approximately $30-per-gram, or around $950 per troy ounce.

Officially prices on the concession are set between $27 and $30 to mirror world prices but the artisanals usually sell at up to half that price. And most miners are part of work gangs so they won’t earn the whole of the gold price.

Broken earth along the route and red slashes across the hills made the Ituri countryside look like a building site. As the light faded we pulled into the parish of Mongbwalu with a red brick church, the parish building and a convent.

After an enthusiastic welcome and a hot dinner, the female members of the expedition were ushered to the Convent of the Sisters of Maternal Charity.

The 1940s convent once had running water and its impressive taps still tempted a twist out of me. But whatever mains had flowed had now been checked and the large enamel bath was home to a bucket and jug filled from a 15-foot high concrete water butt decaying with age.

Sister Therese showed me to my generous room with mosquito net, candle and extra buckets of water for an evening wash. I gladly unpacked and spotted two big spiders on the wall.

For the first time in my life I was too tired to care. I tucked the mosquito net into the gap under the mattress and read by torchlight until I fell asleep.

Posted by PascaleP

Pascale is travelling to the Democratic Republic of Congo to visit AngloGold Ashanti’s mine site in Mongbwalu to collect stories for the Unearth Justice campaign.

She is then heading to Goma, on the border with Rwanda, to see how the £2m CAFOD supporters raised for DR Congo has been spent.