The movement of matter is integral to mining, whether gold flowing down a river or excavation by miners. People, ideas, technology, goods, and gold, are all highly mobile. In the wetlands of Busia and Buhweju, miners deploy rhythmic panning to move matter for a livelihood. In Buhweju, the excavation of gold is intimately bound to directing the movement of water. Use of banana fibers is ubiquitous for diverting and capturing small river channels. As well as for materials, bananas are the basis of local agriculture and a staple food for miners. Some mine sites on the hillslopes coexist with bananas. Where there is water, these sites may be transformed into artisanal distilleries for waragi, banana liqueur. In Busia, people have mined rich gold reserves for generations, more recently attracting new technology, innovation and finance. Change is not linear; many technologies and practices co-exist. ASMOs facilitate movement. Miners have travelled to Tanzania to learn and Tanzanian engineers have returned. This has led to innovation and to gold moving into new markets; some is sold internationally as ‘fairly traded’ or‘ecological’. All the while, this movement of matter transforms the local economy, society, and environment.
1/2 Gold, Busia
From out of the ore. Extracted at SAMA by first crushing ore to a powder, then using the gold kacha, followed by the gold konka, a new technological innovation that doesn’t require the use of mercury for amalgamation.
2/2 Gold, Buhweju
From out of the wetland. Extracted through river panning, a technique that takes knowledge and skill but no mercury.
Akalega
Akalega means scales. Until the 1980s, such akalega were used by local traders to weigh gold bought from artisanal miners. Colonial and modern coins with different weights were used as the unit of measurement. Weighing marks an exchange that signals gold’s value for miners’ and journey away from the mines.
1/3 Repairing mining tools for transport
A gold miner repairs a plastic basin used to transport earth from the bottom of the pit to the washing points. Having scarce capital at their disposal, miners strive to reuse practical and low-cost tools. Plastic basins have the advantage of being light. Their drawback is that they can be easily broken.
2/3 Organizing the flow
A group of miners starts washing the extracted earth after organising the space around a small stream of water. The arrangement of the banana trunks, the construction of canals for the flow of water and small dams must be wisely managed to achieve the desired result.
3/3 Simple complexities
Two miners sift the earth extracted from a hole using two banana tree trunks, a hoe, and their hands. This apparent simplicity should not lead one to think that artisanal technology is rudimentary or primitive. On the contrary, it requires expert knowledge accumulated over generations.
1/3 From bananas to mining and back
Gold mining can coexist with banana cultivation. Gold veins may be rich enough to entice landowners to grant permission to dig their land in exchange for a percentage of the earnings. Materials are separated and moved; once the work is complete, the holes are covered with the same stones and part of the earth extracted.
2/3 From miners to distillers
Once the gold is finished, miners have to find a new job. In this case, miners have become distillers using bananas grown on the same land where they had worked until a few days before. From banana juice can be obtained an alcoholic drink known as waragi.
3/3 Mobile waragi distillery
The banana juice is distilled by cooking it in barrels placed on the fire and connected to pipes cooled with water from streams.
1/3 Complementary methods in depth, width and time
The photo reveals how in Busia, the mining technologies open-casts (made by excavators) and timbered shafts (made from eucalyptus wood) are complementary, used in close connection. Outsiders tend to moralise technologies and compare them. In practice, however, they each make sense under specific conditions that include geology and momentum.
2/3 Non-linear mine design
An old shaft is found, when miners excavate an open-cast for bigger exploration. In the future the miners from Tiira Landlords and Artisanal Miners Association (TLAMA) aim to build new timbered shafts to reclaim the surface.
3/3 How to transform an open-cast mine?
An engineer from Tanzania explains how to transform an open-cast into a timbered shaft. This mine of Tiira Landlords and Artisanal Miners Association (TLAMA) was first built open - to explore - and then covered again to leave only a timbered shaft. The surface is being reclaimed.
1/4 All the way from South Africa
This gold kacha is a washing machine for gold mining. It centrifuges water and powder (crushed gold ore). The gold is separated and concentrated by the gravitational power. NGO Environmental Women for Actions in Development (EWAD) facilitated a gold kacha for SAMA and BUSCO to stimulate mercury free mining.
2/4 Gold cyanidation
Residues from gold mining, tailings, are since recently repurposed in Busia by the technology of cyanidation. Tailings still contain lots of gold. SAMA built this advanced plant and lent out their gold kacha - SAMA now receives the tailings from the gold kacha.
3/4 The ‘first’ timbered shaft in Busia
Timbered shafts enable underground mining that is safe and requires little land. This technology traveled to Busia from Geita (Tanzania). SAMA timbered this shaft. The geology in Busia and Geita differ, which made the first attempts by Tanzanian engineers complex.
4/4 This is not an oxygen pump
Miners use this oxygen pump as a telephone, a communication tool. Via the pipe of the pump, miners at the top of the timbered shaft can communicate with the miners down in the tunnel. The oxygen pump is crucial, too, for underground mining.