They are a relentless addicted dare devils. At the crack of dawn they are already out of their beds and at the gold fields. Ready to disappear deep into the bowels of the earth to start the daily gruesome task in search of the precious metal – gold.
The hardy lot of gold miners know that the task ahead is not just risky, but extremely deadly. There is no single year that can get through without reports of some of these miners being killed or seriously injured. Trapped deep inside the earth bowels by collapsing walls of the gold mines they created.
However, the allure and attraction for hunting for this precious metal is more powerful than the deadly dangers involved in the entire process. Once it was a preserve for men with women only coming in to cash in with food and drink sales, but over the years with mounting economic pressures that is no longer the case – they are heavily involved, especially in panning exercises.
The school leavers and the jobless in the gold mining areas have not been spared the apparently incurable fever of gold mining. It is a deadly captivating incurable fever that has been documented all over the world.
Right from both North and South America, Europe, Asia and to our own South Africa where reported gold deposits have attracted hundreds of thousands of gold fevered individuals braving all manner of challenges across territorial or national borders to the gold mining fields and the allure of massive fortune they portended or promised only to turn into disaster most times.
This is the story of the country’s gold mining fields in Kakamega, Vihiga, Migori, Homa Bay and pockets of neighbouring counties. It has been going on for decades generation after generation trapped into the same vicious deadly circle hunting for the elusive precious mineral.
The Principal Secretary Ministry of Mining Ibrahim Mohammed says: “The biggest irony of the whole equation is the fact that virtually none of those involved in the exercise have ever emerged as wildly golden rich Moghuls. Indeed thousands of those involved have nothing to show or say but only their equally grueling endless abject poverty gripping the affected families in a deadly vicious circle generation after generation.”
Mohammed acknowledges that most of the gold minefields in these counties are crude contraptions and excavations deep into the bowels of the earth. The miners dig wide round vertical holes or pits into the ground. Once underground, more are dug out horizontally veering off into many directions as dictated by the search or identification for the earth lodes bearing gold.
The distances are limitless and hence the ever present dangers of the un-supported or shored up walls of the tunnels collapsing and trapping those inside with deadly consequences. There are no protective clothing or wear, no simple even crude safety measures, so simple or crude emergency precautions leave alone first aid kits.
“This state of affairs is worsened by the use of diesel or petrol generators to pump out water from deep underground to clear the way for miners digging for the precious metal underground. They have to be lowered deep underground and switched on with the end result that the toxic fumes emanating from their smoke poses a deadly threat to the lives of the miners underground,” says Dr. Mohammed.
Open cast mining which according to experts is relatively safer is in limited use in all the affected counties reeling from the deadly golden fever. Where it is found, is usually along rivers, their banks and even their beds during the dry seasons when the water levels are very low.
The story does not stop there since there is also the heavy use of mercury in the mining processes without any inkling of protective cover to the users, but the total fixation is in hunting down and getting the highly elusive precious mineral – gold.
The business has over the decades been and remains so serious like in Kakamega County a whole constituency or sub-county is named after gold. Ikolomani which was once represented by the immediate former Kakamega County Senator Bonny Khalwale is a living classic example. The name according to the local Luhyia language dialect translated into English literally means – “Gold Mine.” It was derived from the heavy gold mining activities in the area which were mostly triggered by the British colonialists.
The County Governor Wycliffe Oparanya says: “The first pre-colonial serious gold mining operation in this region was established at Rostermans area, Kakamega town by the British colonialists long before we got our independence. Ikolomani is all about gold mining that spreads all the way across into neighbouring Vihiga County.”
Oparanya acknowledges the dangers involved in the crude mining methods that are being used by the miners across the region, but is quick to add that the county Governments concerned were working out with the miners’ leaders ways and means of minimizing or totally eradicating these dangers through better and advanced methods of mining.
He says that though the Rostermans mining concerns were closed down and completely sealed out by the colonialists, the mining activities in the neighbouring areas have continued without stopping since the locals were caught up with the golden fever.
The governor says that however the biggest news for the county government came in February 2017 when an international British prospecting firm discovered the largest gold deposits in the county that have never been discovered anywhere else in the country – thus totally and completely transforming the golden fortunes of that county perhaps forever.
In February 2017, the United Kingdom (UK) firm announced the discovery of high-grade gold at its mines in Kakamega County. Acacia Mining said that it had discovered an estimated resource of 1.31 million ounces of gold at its mines in the Liranda Corridor in Kakamega.
Acacia announced that the discovery’s grade, at a grade of 12.1 grammes per tonne is one of the highest in Africa. The then Mining Cabinet Secretary Dan Kazungu estimated the discovery could be valued at Kshs. 171 billion ($1.65 billion).
The firm, however, said the scale of the find is small and it would need to undertake more tests and drill more exploratory wells. This is with the aim of increasing the resources to upwards of two million ounces, which would make the mines economically viable adding that it is too early to assign a value to the find.
In the former Nyanza province investigations by the People Daily established that the story is no different from what is happening in the goldfields of the neighbouring former western province with the most affected county being Migori just like Kakamega.
The story also goes back to the colonial days when in 1882 the first gold deposits were reportedly discovered at Lolgorian on the border of Nyanza and Rift Valley, but South Nyanza’s Migori has over the decades dominated the scenario.
According to Government geologists in Kisumu, the gold deposits in Nyanza Province, mainly in the Southern part can support large-scale mining for up to 15 years and modern technology in gold prospecting has more than trebled in making more discoveries.
“This seems to be true since because the long rains, small-scale miners in Nyatike alone harvested gold worth Kshs. 15 million, in just two weeks very recently. Experts estimate that with the use of modern technology, the mining industry could earn the country up to Sh400 million annually. This translates to up to Kshs. 32 billion in 15 years,” says Migori Governor Okoth Obado.
Obado says it was very unfortunate that the local artisanal gold miners sell cheaply whatever little they get or much of the mineral to middlemen. In the former mining sites like Macalder, the former foreign miners damaged huge hectares of land which can no longer support agriculture adding that other goldmines are located at Osiri.
He says that the consequences were that big caves were left open and many local miners who tried to go in to mines have died after the walls collapsed on them. In some of the holes, there are pungent and lethal gases emitted which have also suffocated local miners to death. Many of those languishing in the caves are jobless youths.
