Down a dirt track lies a scarred landscape of pits and mounds of brown-red dirt. There are no trees left here to block the sun that beats down on diggers balancing sacks of dirt on their heads and women wading waist-deep in muddy pools to wash gravel, their infant children tied to their backs.
After two months, gold output from the site is falling off, and many of the 300 shafts on the two-hectare plot have been abandoned as miners move on, leaving desolation in their wake. In some areas, diggers have begun using toxic cyanide and mercury to extract gold from the ore they mine
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