Her son’s woes are suspected by a group of environmental health experts to be linked to mercury exposure from the gold mining exploits at Osiri Matanda, one of Kenya’s biggest artisanal gold mining sites, and where Jullita, and many other mothers from the area, work.
“He thinks you are a health officer looking to poke his wound,” his mother says, explaining the petrified expression on her son’s face the moment he realises we are as strangers.
Jullita welcomes us into her two-roomed house that she shares with her husband, John Omitta, and seven children. Her son is just one of numerous survivors of suspected mercury poisoning in the area.
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