Evan Joseph Massey

Poor Man’s Gold

On a mountain in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, hundreds of villagers mine with axes, hands, anything. The soil shines with gold. The air swells with the symphony of shovels, a percussive piercing of dirt and rock. With every stab, they dig closer to their own grain of grandeur. Ore is desperately deposited into plastic bags, nearly-bursting burlap sacks, or cradled carefully in the womb of sweat-drenched shirts. Some rake the walls of a 10-foot ditch. One man with a shovel spears the ditch’s rusty slope, close to severing the hand of his fellow countryman. The other prospector, who nearly lost a hand, throws gold dust back at the shoveler. The camera then pans away from what looks like a potential eruption on the hill. I see a young boy holding open a small bag as his father posits their riches. The boy peers into the sack, and if a camera were filming his young face, it’d be irradiated and washed in the brilliance of the wondrous mineral. He then eyes his father, gouging into another groove. Men squat and move gold around in a large brown saucer, then plant them into a silver pot to clean. A man who wears a gold ring on his finger and a gold bracelet embraces granules of gold in his palm. All the while, I watch Black hands—hands like my own—turn gold. In a perfect world, every one of them would be a millionaire. In a perfect world. A day-long trip southwest by way of unpaved roads and a frequently overloaded ferry ride, which—when boarded by hundreds of families en route to funerals, weddings, and pastures-new—resembles a slow-drifting community, lands you in Katanga. There, you will find a quarry of copper managed by the Canadian mining company Ivanhoe Mines, Zijin Mining Group Co. out of China, and the DRC government positioned over one of the highest grades of copper on the planet. Kamoa Kakula mine, in the DRC, like Chile and Peru, is primed to become one of the world’s most important copper producers, according to Ivanhoe Mines Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland. For more than three decades, Friedland turned over close to 59 countries searching for minerals and resources, which he calls a “sport.” He claims copper is vital in the battle against climate change, and DRC’s highest grade of 2.8%, versus Chile’s 0.61% and Peru’s 0.55%, further illuminates Congolese copper as being in high demand. It’s no secret that Africa is the richest continent globally in terms of natural resources and minerals. And Africa, specifically the DRC, where 70% percent of the country lives below the poverty line, now plays a pivotal role in the advancing world. With the country’s substantial deposits of cobalt and copper, key components used in the construction of electric cars—there are 150-180 pounds of copper in a Tesla—not to mention cell phones and computers, more and more companies are setting up shop in the Sub-Saharan, many of which derive from China. And the manufacturing of electric cars is forecasted to increase as numerous automobile companies push for a smaller ecological footprint. It’s no wonder that, because of its growing demand, Friedland likens copper to oil. He calls it the “new oil.” When asked by CNN correspondent Erik Shatzker on the prospect of wars being fought over copper, Friedland hopes we can refrain from any kind of conflict. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein oversaw four elite divisions as Iraq invaded Kuwait. After just two days, Iraq took control of 20% percent of the world’s oil. On Ivanhoe’s website, the prospect of war seems a distant reality. Images flash of Congolese men and women in dark flaxen mines clad in hardhats and coveralls, brandishing thumbs-up, smiles carved on their faces. Unfortunately, at least to me, it mirrors shades of the King Leopold days. When Belgium repulsively ruled over the DRC, specifically in Katanga, the native Luba people were forced to work the mines. They were cheaper labor than their white counterparts—the latter being protected by labor unions. According to Ralph E. Birchard in his article “Copper in the Katanga region of the Belgian Congo,” native workers were granted housing, electricity, medical attention, monthly allowances, bonuses, vacation with half-pay, and funded trips to Europe. Yet, given these “necessities of life,” as Birchard claims, the average compensation for white workers was $5.20 a day compared to 85 cents for native hands. In those days, as reported by Birchard, copper in Katanga could be found by examining the abundance of anthills, many of which were forty-foot copper-molded castles. The appearance of ants plays an integral role in the Luba calendar, indicating the seasons and dictating planting schedules. The Luba are also known for being handy, sculpting, and crafting beautiful female figurines, highlighting the worth of their women who served as oracles and counselors to kings. Sadly, most of these Luba sculptures do not reside in the DRC. It’s said that the African goddess Oshun, often depicted in a lemon-gold dress, favored copper, as it was considered the most valuable metal at the time. But she, as of late, has switched to admiring gold. Five thousand years ago, copper was first utilized by the Sumerians, extracted from ancient mines on Cyprus—from which the country is named—and minted into Roman coins. The Romans also employed gold for casting currency. A gold coin was recently discovered in an archaeological site in Pompeii. Dormant volcanoes, like Mount Vesuvius, are said to be potential mining sites. In a recent study by Oxford University, researchers speculated that “copper concentrations in sub-volcanic contexts could be as high as 7000 parts per million, for over one million tonnes of dissolved copper.” There are obstacles, though. First, the copper would have to be extracted two miles deep into the crater. Second, at such depths, miners would melt in the 752-degree heat. Australia is home to nearly 150 volcanos. None of them, however, have erupted for about 4,000 to 5,000 years. Australia is also home to the Jukkan Gorge caves, an Aboriginal site dated 46,000 years old. Mining company Rio Tinto, which the Australian parliament has ordered to rebuild the caves, blasted through two Jukkan rock shelters for the expansion of their iron ore mine. Three executives have since stepped down after the destruction. It is sacred settings like Jukkan Gorge, which are famous in the annals of the Aboriginals One Aboriginal Dreamtime tale about a giant who nestled himself into the earth, thus mutating into a volcano, might be the oldest story on the planet. Sacred Apache land is also threatened by Rio Tinto in Arizona. Rio’s Resolution Mine continues to expand its grip on the neck of Oak Flat, which holds an abundance of minerals underground. Tactics such as block cave mining entail tunneling under the deposit to mine from the bottom up, which is a strategy currently being considered by the Resolution Mine. Sparking a thread of comments beneath the YouTube video on safety concerns. But no users posted anything about Apache tears. Seventy-five Apaches, facing defeat from the US Calvary, rode their horses off a nearby mountain to their deaths rather than be killed. The tears of their loved ones transformed into black volcanic rock before hitting the ground. According to T.E. Downing et al. in their report Indigenous Peoples and Mining Encounters: Strategies and Tactics, mining could cause “new poverty.” “Indigenous peoples are suffering,” they state, “a loss of land, short and long-term health risks, loss of access to common resources, homelessness, loss of income, social disarticulation, food insecurity, loss of civil and human rights, and spiritual uncertainty.” While Ivanhoe’s Robert Friedland boasts about employing Congolese youth, who he insists write code and operate heavy machinery, it is in the DRC copper and cobalt mines where child miners are employed. Most of them have dropped out of school to support their families. Some children have revealed that they mined to pay for school. One thirteen-year-old boy, who cleans ore, began working so that his family “would no longer be without anything to eat.” I wish I could get this disturbing image of the future out of my head: child miners, whose faces are encrusted with dry mud, descending deep into the mouths of volcanos, or their little hands wielding shovels as they scrape the seabed, or stirring up spirits on ancestral lands. The entire earth may soon be punctured with a myriad of mining holes spanning miles. Depressions we’d see from space. Because of its high scrap value at upwards of $3.00 per pound, copper has been coined the “poor man’s gold.” Leading me to think of Bubbles, the homeless heroin addict in the HBO series The Wire. Specifically, I’m picturing the scene where Bubbles and his soon-dying-from-an-overdose friend steal copper from a scrapyard, making a break for it with copper pipes in a shopping cart. As grins were breaking across their faces, they rattled down the street on their way to another high. Though most folks aren’t so fortunate. A quick google search of copper theft yields photos of two individuals in Dallas, Texas electrocuted while attempting to steal copper from an electrical substation. Pictures show them frozen in ashes, resembling the lava-cased bodies in Pompeii. Others hang from powerlines. Thieves even stole a life-size copper statue of Jesus in Illinois. In Houston, thieves lifted copper from an Alzheimer's association. I felt oddly relieved when I stared back at the mugshot of a high school friend, Ebon Fife. He thankfully hadn’t been encased in his burnt flesh. He’d been arrested for copper theft. Fife’s apprehension came by way of an undercover sting operation for what authorities called “a copper theft ring.” He and a man named Lamont Phillips were charged with larceny, stealing copper wire from churches, hospitals, and clinics. I looked up the date of his arrest, surprised that it was a few days after I celebrated my birthday on deployment in Afghanistan, on which I stood 23 copper bullets in the sand like candles, blowing them down one after the other. The last time I saw Ebon was on the basketball court one summer. The sun passed light through the small gym windows as his 6’6 frame soared to rip rebounds from the rim. Gazing on while he launched and dunked on anyone foolish enough to guard him. We dapped one last time before summer fused with fall, and the clap of our hands echoed with electricity. I wondered if he had been living on the streets. Stealing and selling copper to survive. If things have played out differently, I thought, that could have been me. My fate forever altered. My mugshot staring back at you after searching my name. I mistook copper for gold as a teen. Mall jewelers flagged me down with fake gold-plated copper chains dazzling in my young eyes. I’d gawk at the assortment of “ice” blazing under white light. Necklaces glistened with dollar signs encrusted with cubic zirconia, crosses dangling and flashing, and one with the head of Jesus whose bronze eyes were open for eternity. It didn’t occur to me then that children could have mined my necklace. Who dropped out of school to mine what I falsely valued? How much food were they able to buy for their families? Their innocent, hopeful hands are often the first to ever touch the treasured articles on your fingers, wrists, and necks. But as the clip ended, in which Congolese men were bathing gold, it reminded me of when I did the same thing while driving to the pawnshop. My mother’s necklaces locked in my fingers; the only time I touched real gold. She’d instructed me to pawn her jewelry. We were behind on rent. As I stood at the pawnshop counter, the greasy-haired gentleman waiting on me, I handled my mother’s gold jewelry for the last time. Thinking about who’s skin on which they’d shine so brilliantly. How it would no longer shine on my mother. It pained to hand away my mother’s prized possession. It pained me to watch as link after link lightly poured from my palm.

Alolika Dutta