Nazca - Relave, Pullo District

Very early start. Left our lovely hacienda totally oblivious to how gruelling and emotional the day ahead was to become. After an hour on the road we turned off right by a roadside brothel called the “Hot Mine” which had paintings of blonde Slavic looking girls over the stucco walls. Most likely what was being mined inside had less of a blonde yield than it said on the tin. 

 The road now was a dirt track headed straight to the distant mountains following a dried up river bed. The only thing that identified the road from the rest of the boulder strewn terrain was the fact that any rocks larger than a Hyundai mini bus had been pushed to one side.

Heidi and I had already been story telling about how on a previous trip to Tanzania driving on un-made roads for 3 straight days had made our internal organs feel as though they had been blended. This drive was far worse. Sometimes the motions were so violent that the only thing to do was laugh as the only other option was a tantrum.

The route into the Aurelsa mine was going to take two and a half hours. The river bed had long become a dust bowl, a valley created millions of years ago by a glacial shift and now about as welcoming as Millwall are to the away fans.

Every now and again a truck would belt past on one of the parallel tracks generating a massive red cloud. These were transporting water to the mining villages where there was not a drop to be found in the parched valley. Just on our final approach to the outskirts of the first mining village there was a loud bang as the van bottomed out which in turn seemed to cause the temperature to rocket. Not here, not now. We stopped and much conversation was had in Spanish. David, Heidi and I were just waiting for the bad news. Amazingly after a few minutes and a lot of dialogue the gauge started to head back to the blue. We carried on. Now climbing up one of the mountains we got the first view of the sprawl of shabby dusty dwellings nestled in the dry valley. Dotted amongst the mix of brick, corrugated iron and straw single room houses (obviously following the three little pigs school of architecture)  we could see the red brick wells where mercury is used to extract the gold from the rock. This traditional process is not only harmful for the workers but due to unregulated conditions the residue frequently finds its way into the earth and water table.  To support an alternative kind of processing is one of the reasons we have been invited here by Solidaridad.

There is a safer way to extract the gold but like most cleaner alternatives the implementation involves a willingness from the people involved, education, organisation and support from external bodies often NGO’s such as the one we were with who have all the expertise and funding necessary to change people’s ingrained practises. It’s a slow process. The Aurelsa mine has been working with Solidaridad and a responsible mining board in Columbia for 4 years in order to achieve certification which eventually leads to Fairtrade status for the mine. In turn jewellers such as Stephen Webster and Garrard who are prepared to pay a premium for gold mined and processed sustainably allows us to pass this on to the growing number of people who want to make choices about their consumption based on its impact on people and the environment.

We headed to the office of the Aurelsa mine to meet the chairman of the board; Juan. He had arrived in this valley twenty five years ago as a 15 year old boy who had heard there was gold in these hills. As hard as it was for us to imagine living such a basic and remote life here today, 25 years ago there was nothing but the allure of rocks laced with gold. Over those years more and more prospectors had settled, starting families and a life. Juan and the others had built the school, the medical centre… everything.

Five years ago with a home, a family and a proper community of which he was an elder, Juan decided he wanted to change the traditional practises to make the community they founded safe. Listening to this smart articulate guy speak about his ambition while sitting in his office so far from anything, we couldn’t help emotionally connecting with him and his story. This was someone with minimal education who through hard manual work had lifted himself and the now 87 man workforce up from absolute poverty to become shareholders in a small but responsible mining operation that is one of a handful worldwide who have made choices that will soon be sending strong messages to large global mining operations.

The mine is already processing 100 tonnes of rock per month up from just 30 a year ago. Not just through manpower; this is about organisation, cooperation and the hiring of a mining engineer which is just about unheard of with such small scale mining. Every stage has been improved and monitored by Solidaridad to ensure transparency and sustainable business practice.

I asked what sort of home would Juan and his family live in. I was told that not only had he lifted himself from poverty but he had recently bought a small house in Lima where his children were at college and not expected to go to the mine which would have been the norm. They were studying business technology and IT.

I said to Juan that he must be a very proud; he just smiled and lowered his head, after all he was just a miner.

The next part of the schedule we weren’t prepared for; a trip down the shaft. With hard hats on we were subject to the most hair-raising, switch back trip going further up the mountain on another unmade track. The truck was so close to the edge we found new faith that our lives were in safe hands with our tiny driver who could only just reach the pedals but had mined there as long as Juan. We soon discovered that if you are a miner height is a definite disadvantage. 

The mine shaft was full height (if you are no taller than me that is) and a 2 person width straight into the mountain. As we entered we heard a series of thumps. This was either the sound of the 50ft woman coming toward us or the timed dynamite explosions at the business end of things hundreds of metres into the black abyss. There were no lights. Handing out canaries and davy lamps it became obvious that Juan had every intention of revealing the full extent of his good business practice. We followed him in; every now and again we would stop and stare down another bottomless pit where exploratory work was being carried out. Then the worst nightmare happened; right in front of us a load of rock fell from somewhere. Collectively the non-miners hearts stopped. Juan started to shout and a light came running toward us. More shouting, this time Spanish name. A guy unaware that we were there was working in a parallel shaft above causing the rock to fall through one of the connecting shafts. Heidi turned back leaving me as cameraman. Finally we got to the face. Miners were hammering holes into the bed rock and inserting sticks of dynamite and joining lengths of white detonation cable.  My sense of self preservation went into overdrive right then. It was time to get out.

The final part of our day was to be invited into someone’s house. Jilly was a cook at the mine. She had been until a year ago, a kindergarten teacher in Lima. Her husband had left her  and she had lost her job. She heard about the possibility of work at the Aurelsa mine so she packed one backpack with everything and hitched with her 7 year old son. When she arrived she used all of her savings to rent a one room corrugated house with a concrete floor which they slept on. One year later she has officially been placed on pay role but with no husband the two of them live on $150 a month after deductions for benefits. Her water alone costs her $20. She is 27 and a fighter but is not happy with her situation. She’s been promised a pay rise and if it comes they’ll stay, if not they will try elsewhere.

I gave her son one of the Footballs I bought with me along with sets of coloured pens and paper. Unfortunately the ball was an official Chelsea FC one and I suspect he supported Man U like the rest of them. Anyway he still shook my hand in gracias before running off in excitement.