During the recent Meningitis Vaccination Campaign, I went
with some hospital staff to Sanbaranbougou, a large gold mining town in the
region of Kedougou.
To give a bit of background, over the past ten years, a gold
rush has significantly changed the landscape of Kedougou. The rising price of gold led Western
mining companies to begin mining exploration in the area, and migrants from all
over West Africa flocked to Kedougou in search of gold. Overnight, small villages transformed
into booming shantytowns.
During the process of small-scale artisanal mining, miners
use mercury to separate the gold from the rest of the silt, and the mercury is
later burned off, emitting mercury gas, which the miners and other community
members breathe in. Long-term
exposure to the inhalation of mercury leads to a wide array of health problems,
including issues with fetal and child development. Peace Corps Volunteers, Annē Linn, Patrick Linn, Karin Nordstrom, and Martin Van Den
Berghe are working on a project to reduce mercury emissions through the use of
retorts, which recapture the mercury vapor during burning, preventing the
release of mercury into the air.
To read more about their project and the gold mining situation in the
region, check out Annē’s blog:
I had heard that Sanbaranbougou was the Wild West of
Senegal, but I was still shocked at the level of chaos. The transient community of miners, sex
workers, and vendors live in and work out of crinting shacks. Crinting is what we call thin woven
wood fencing. It is not durable,
and most of the structures in the mining town have blue tarps over them to
weather the rainy season.
Everything in the town seems to be fleeting, including the
infrastructure.
Crinting vendor stalls stretch out into the horizon, selling
everything from motorcycles to Biskrem cookies. Going along with the culture of fatalism, Allah will decide
your fate, and you never know if you will live until tomorrow. This means that it is unnecessary to
plan for your future, so as miners gain small fortunes, they spend them hastily
on motorcycles and televisions rather than saving. It’s frustrating to see the high rate of boys who drop out
of school to work in the mines.
The allure of earning money quickly wins out over waiting until school is
finished.
As the hospital car pulled up to the vaccination site, I was disturbed by the culture of the transient community. Traditional Muslims do not drink alcohol, and the first thing I saw was a man walking around town drinking beer at 10am. The majority of the town is composed of young men, which may account for the high rates of violence in the community. Unfortunately, there are no police to regulate the fighting and theft, which makes it a scary place to be after dark. Sex workers are trafficked to the mining towns from Nigeria, and the mining towns have the highest rates of HIV in the country. In this seemingly lawless town where anything goes, it does feel like the Wild West.
As the hospital car pulled up to the vaccination site, I was disturbed by the culture of the transient community. Traditional Muslims do not drink alcohol, and the first thing I saw was a man walking around town drinking beer at 10am. The majority of the town is composed of young men, which may account for the high rates of violence in the community. Unfortunately, there are no police to regulate the fighting and theft, which makes it a scary place to be after dark. Sex workers are trafficked to the mining towns from Nigeria, and the mining towns have the highest rates of HIV in the country. In this seemingly lawless town where anything goes, it does feel like the Wild West.
People filter in from other West African countries and other regions of
Senegal, creating a confusing mix of languages and cultures. Filling out people’s vaccination cards
during the campaign was difficult since many people did not understand Malinké
or French. The lack of continuity
makes it impossible to keep tabs on the community. People are constantly moving in and out, and there’s no way
to make sure everyone in the community has received a vaccination or has been
tested for HIV.
Looking at it from a health perspective, Sanbaranbougou is a
nightmare. When there are disease outbreaks, those living in large mining towns
are more susceptible since they live in close quarters and tend to miss
vaccinations and mosquito net distributions due to their transient
lifestyle. It’s a breeding ground
for health problems that then make their way into the surrounding communities
in the region. For example, let’s
say a miner contracts typhoid at the mines and then returns to his home village
to visit his family. He goes to
the bathroom and doesn’t wash his hands with soap afterwards. Next, he walks around the village
shaking everyone’s hands right before they eat. Three days later, a bunch of the people in the community now
have typhoid. Or maybe this same
miner also slept with a sex worker who was HIV positive without using a condom
and is now HIV positive himself.
He returns to his home village and proceeds to sleep with his 3 wives,
and all of them are still breastfeeding their babies. Now maybe him, his 3 wives, and 3 babies are all HIV
positive. The spread of diseases
that usually would be contained to a village becomes a much larger problem when
a transient community is spreading them to villages throughout the region.
When looking at how to improve health in the mining towns, a
wide variety of questions arise. How
do you implement behavior change, such as the use of condoms or mosquito nets,
in a transient community? When no
one feels a sense of ownership over the community, who is going to make it
their job to ensure the health of it?
Unfortunately, there are no clear answers to these questions.
After visiting Sanbaranbougou for the day, I was extremely
happy and relieved to return to Saraya.
Visiting a transient town makes me appreciate living in a place where
villagers take care of one another and there is a strong sense of
community. Thankfully I’ve heard
there’s no gold in Saraya!
