World's Gold Rush in Mauritania

Five o'clock in the morning Thousands of cars Drive Through the

Sahara and Mauritania

The Government has just opened up a new area for gold mining

Signaling the start of a Fresh Gold Rush

Mohamed Salim is placing all his hopes in the sand he's one of the gold miners

Digging holes in the ground last night I didn't sleep I wanted to get here first to get a good spot there's no need to work too hard here

We'll find it soon we'll go down to 50 meters then we'll find good gold on the

Surface there are small nuggets but go down to the bottom and you'll find a lot

I started in 2016. I've been working with gold ever since it's better than

Any other job I'm from a poor family I came here to

Send my children to school and to be able to send money to my family

Especially my mother have you seen this rock I have to go and

Test it Bears clues that there's gold in it among the 40’000 gold miners here is

Muhammad Hemdi he's come to set up a store

It's Gold Rush here people come here seeking money wanting to find gold

Finding gold increases their purchasing power and they buy more and more things

That's why we're setting up a shop here there's greater earning potential here

Than in town because we can increase prices a lot more yeah

The unemployment rate is catastrophic that's why you see a lot of people

Coming here to try their luck Muhammad fall has pitched his tent away

From everyone else he's confident he'll find a good vein but digging for gold

wasn't his first choice of job this London University I did two years of University I studied telecommunications but it didn't work Out yeah it's very difficult to find a job to live here so you take a path and you keep going until you find it I tried to leave and go abroad Tocontinue my studies I applied for a few visas for Spain for Germany and for Canada but they all refused it's more difficult than gold finding a Visa is more difficult than finding gold really come on these are the places where we've been digging we dig then we leave we work on one spot if we find something we'll know where the gold vein is the precious metal the men are seek is present in the form of underground gold veins geologist El Hussein Kebani explains how gold mining works the gold miners try to locate the vein they follow it at depth sometimes it goes off at an angle sometimes it goes off vertically it depends on how it's fractured this is the surface if you imagine there are veins here of course the miners will try to find the part of the vein closest to the surface they'll dig here for example but others who start their hole here for example they'll have to dig a lot to reach the vein so it all depends on the depth of the Strand miners dig deep using their strength and the Jackhammer with barely any protective gear foreign typically the holes are up to 60 meters deep but some go down as far as 200 meters foreign it's very dangerous here you're working and suddenly it collapses the sand falls

On you everything changes in an instant you can be in there we'll start looking

for you we'll remove the sand until we find you there's no Oxygen that's why we make two meter lateral caves if the pit collapses you can stay in there and wait with the oxygen until we come and take the sand out and get you that's why we did little caves on both sides there are a lot of fractures in the Rocks that's why from a safety point of

View it's always bad as soon as the miner digs down the rock changes

Fractures and there are Falls the rock is not that stable in this part

of the Sahara due to the informal nature of their work many miners die in anonymity in a

climate of General indifference in this area a week after filming this report two gold miners lost their lives in a landslide trucks transport the sacks of extracted Rock to be processed in Kami known as the Saharan gold capital the Gold Rush has swelled the population of this town pushing it up tenfold in recent years generators and other Essentials can all be found in Kami which is thronged with many young men from abroad looking for work the bags of stone are taken to a huge processing site known as the Griage has been working here for several years come here with our stones and we process them we put the mercury in the machine with the rocks extracting one kilo of gold from The Rock requires at least 1.3 kilos of Mercury this poses a significant risk to both the environment and human health exposure to large amounts of mercury can

Be fatal even a small amount can inflict severe damage on the nervous system

The white metal you see as mercury inside there's gold if we burn it the Mercury will evaporate leaving us with just gold foreign there's a lot of gold here last year in

Just one day I found 545 grams of gold in 15 kilos of Rock this nugget has many carrots usually a nugget this size would only weigh one gram but this weighs two and a half

grams once the gold is recovered the rubble is stored next to the site local NGOs warn that the dust is spread by the wind which blows strongly on this side of the country

The sea is less than 30 kilometers from Kami just like the bank Dagon National

Park a UNESCO world heritage site for more than 30 years famous for its unique

Biodiversity the Nature Reserve is also one of the richest fishing grounds in

Western Africa and an important nesting area the impact of mercury on the Park's

Ecosystem could be disastrous local NGO leader Saida Alibabut sounded the alarm

Long ago because of the extraction sand filled with very dangerous Metals is poured

In to the soil depending on the winds which generally Blow from the Northeast

To the Southwest the sand is carried either we stop using these metals or we

Make sure they're not put back into the sand that's carried here as journalist Maimuna select has been warning for years Mercury poses a danger to the entire region

In 2013 to 2016 the Mercury level in the village of week was 0.005 milligrams

Per kilo in 2021 Mercury was measured at 0.5 milligrams per kilo that's 100 times

More mercury in less than 10 years Mercury is deposited on phytoplankton in

The mud flats the Plankton is eaten by small fish which are eaten by larger

Fish the Mercury passes from animal to animal it is transformed and at the end

Of the chain in humans it becomes methyl Mercury which is extremely toxic and

Dangerous. This is a very very heavy environmental cost has this phenomenon been studied enough are we really thinking about it are we asking the right questions

But for Muhammad FAL and all the other miners desperate to E scape grinding

Poverty environmental concerns come second to Big Dreams we found the stones here yeah it's not far.