International Save the Children Alliance
Joe in Democratic Republic of Congo
by Rewrite the Future Communications Manager, Joe Hall
Mining mud and the people of Pluto
There was something more surreal about the goldmines of Mongbwalu than anything I had seen so far in Congo. Three hours' drive from Bunia, in Ituri - the north-east of the country - and we were in another world, a world of its own.
Everything was driven by goldmining, which was the heart (and the lungs, the liver and the legs) of the local economy. There seemed to be little else but that - or at least everything seemed to depend on it.
When I thought of mines, I would think of coal mines in the north of England: industry and machines and diggers and lorries and lifts. But here, the diggers are men - or boys. They are turned into machines. (There has been no investment here in industrialised mines -- though it is coming.) It's crude work, digging dirt out of the ground with spades, washing off the mud, then smashing apart the small stones to see if you can find little pieces of gold. It's not glamorous or exciting -- there is no cry out as someone finds a big nugget of gold -- but it is dangerous.
Imagine spending a week seven kilometres underground. I saw a dark hole that boys (anything from early teenagers) and men disappear into for hours, perhaps a day, or even a week at a time. It must be another world again. You and I can only imagine the dark, cold and wet for that long. And the threat of the roof collapsing over your head (particularly as they also dig away at the columns that were left to support the roof).
A way of life doesn't change overnight, however much you would like it to. As we left the mine, one of the boys (or had he missed out on being a boy? he was 18 now) grabbed us - he wanted 
to go to school he said, he had never been to school. Would I pay for his education? It would only have been a few dollars. I wanted to... but how can you pay for only one? We had to leave him. I knew what his life would continue to be: working all day from 6 in the morning in backbreaking conditions, then drinking away the night and often spending the last money he had left on a prostitute for the night. I saw a bar where these men and teenagers go night after night. It's the same. Night after night.
So we went to Pluto. Another world again. Not the planet but a small town called Pluto not far from Mongbwalu, where we went to see the school. Why? We are supporting education in the area, to try to give children the opportunity of doing something different with their life. I met these young children (right) who were so excited just to be there and I felt instinctively from them that education was important.
There is more to it of course: the nagging thought I kept having was that the whole area lives on the gold industry. However much the local people want to change that, with our help, it needs more than education. I heard of schemes to help people save (the banks here basically don't work) -- so that even if you work in the mines, at least you can build a nest egg and get out of it sooner or later. I heard of training schemes for adults, to teach them other trades if they want to do something else with their lives. These schemes felt like just the beginning -- a few years ago there was intense, terrifying fighting going on here, so just earning a stable living must seem like a good thing. But at least it's a beginning.
I couldn't end downbeat after I met these two lads. Just as I was leaving, they came through the school grounds on their way back home from working in a mine. They simply hated mining. "It's not a life," one of them said. "We're hoping to go to school next year" and finally I saw a little hope from them. It was the only way they saw out of a life, and not a good life, in a goldmine. And I knew we must support that hope.
