Essakane
Essakane is a gold mining town in the Burkina Faso sahel area, about 35km east of Gorom-Gorom. The town was born about 30 years ago when gold was found. It is a paradox that the least developed region of the world's fourth poorest country has a rich deposit of gold. With international gold-mining companies moving in now, will the gold actually benefit the local people and area, or leave devastation in its wake?
Essakane is set in the flat plains among scattered Songhai villages. Whichever side you approach it from, you pass through bare, moonscape-like
vistas where rocks and earth are piled high around hundreds of holes where people
search for gold. The town only exists because of the gold, but over time the town has grown from a
ramshackle assembly of temporary huts to a full town with its own market, although life is still very harsh
and basic for most.
Digging for gold
Money from the rocks.
The gold is sold to buyers, who weigh the gold on tiny scales, paying per "half-matchstick" in weight.
Most people make very little of course, barely scratching a living.
Nevertheless, in such a poor region, that “little” has been a vital
source of income to people 
struggling to feed their families. And there
is of course always the hope that that big find will be just in that next rock. A few people do get rich quickly that
way, but local lore has it that such money is not “blessed” – too often
it gets wasted on flashy motorbikes and ghettoblasters and watches and
drink, and houses that never get finished before the money runs out
again. It is not seen as benefiting the person’s life, family, and
community.
An unhealthy environment
Meanwhile, respiratory disease is rife among the diggers. And
disease of all kinds prosper in the ramshackle sprawl of temporary
shelters with poor or no sanitation, and virtually no water supply. Mat
shelters used to be the norm until the fires that occasionally
destroyed the readily flammable temporary homes finally prompted people
to build in mud brick. And crime, prostitution (with accompanying STDs
and HIV, of course), and drug use follow the gold money. There is
little sense of community. A local paper described it recently as the
“wild west”.
Yet people continue to work here, because they often see little alternative. In a good year, people’s fields in the area don’t give enough to feed a family for a year. And good years are rare. So after every harvest, the numbers at Essakane swell again with people seeking to make ends meet.
The Church in Essakane
Orezone
And now Orezone, a Canadian mining company has moved in to Essakane. They plan to invest
$346 million to build a proper mine to exploit the gold. This will have many consequences, including
the complete relocation of the whole of Essakane and about 7 other villages. A new Essakane will be born.
But what kind of future does it have...?
