‘It’s never enough’: the Senegal goldminers surviving from one nugget to the next

theguardian.com:

On a stopover in Mali on his way to Libya, Bakary Jammeh abandoned plans to board a boat to Italy. He had a brother there, but Jammeh became convinced he should put their reunion on hold and turn back in search of gold.

Jammeh had met a Senegalese man with a pocket full of cash and 15 grams of gold. The man was from Kédougou in southeastern Senegal, where villages with long traditions of panning for gold are quietly transforming into sprawling mining towns.

The region along the Gambia river is now awash with prospectors from across west Africa, most were subsistence farmers seeking to hit a nugget of gold and transform their lives. Villages like Bantako, where Jammeh has worked, are now untamed settlements of thousands of people, where markets sell pickaxes, helmets and moonshine alongside everyday necessities.

Top: Bantako, in south-east Senegal. Centre left: A busy street in Bantako, where the population has grown as people come to look for gold. Centre right: Miners on their way to work in the artisanal gold mining camps around the town. Bottom: Miners assemble around the makeshift buildings of the camp before going to work

But riches are rarely found, and Jammeh, originally from the Gambia, is still searching for his fortune 15 years after he first climbed down the crude pits bored into Bantako’s cleared bushland. Most miners can go weeks, or even months, between small discoveries, few leave. A crumb of gold that pays for a few weeks of food keeps them there. It rarely provides a permanent escape from poverty.

His own luck once brought him a find of 85g of gold, which he took straight home to his mother.

Bakary Jammeh, from the Gambia, thought he would try his luck at gold prospecting while on his way to Italy to join his