Kenyan women take on male-dominated artisanal mining
Poverty, unemployment and a lack of opportunity have driven women into the traditionally male-dominated world of artisanal mining in Kenya
11 February 2021 - 05:00
Every morning, women in tattered clothes and slippers emerge from their homes in Masara, a village in the southwestern county of Migori, Kenya. Each carries a packed lunch of porridge in a calabash, along with a small bottle of mercury and a basin in which to sieve crushed rock — standard tools of the trade at the mines they’re headed to.
The women of Migori have mastered the art of crushing the rock coming out of the mining pits — some more than 200m deep — and then sieving it to extract gold. It’s hard labour, born of necessity...
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