End of the Rainbow

"End of the Rainbow"

The story of the gold mining company going to Guinea and taking the gold that belongs to the people that live there is a sad commentary on what happened when people are not made aware of what is happening to them. There have always been companies that take advantage of people like these but this story is even more stark and unfair.

Reaction to the mine in its sparsely populated destination is mixed. The company has paid for a new school and men given jobs at the plant are grateful, but others fear forced relocation and toxic runoff into the water supply. The main spokesperson is a level-headed village chief who hopes the "pagan" visitors and his Muslim people can work and live together successfully.

The big obstacle to peaceful co-existence is the company's massive land grab; the lease encompasses areas where their gold has traditionally been gathered to supplement incomes in lean harvest months. Though not unsympathetic to the cause, security bosses think they have little option but to round up those attempting now-illegal nighttime plundering of their own gold. Given all-areas access by everyone, some dramatic scenes of interrogation and the tense fall-out following arrests. The place they keep prisoners if little more than an old metal train car and probably very hot inside.

Easy going workers also get to know the foreign workers shipped in with the machinery. So, it's the story of a bunch of seedy white guys drinking away their wages at the on-site bar and they refer to these experiences as "isolation madness". As one of them puts it, these times are full of melancholy tinged thoughts of other places and other times and these guys who've been on the road for so long, they don't really know where home is any more.

What a sad, and familiar story this is.