Traditional miners stick to old ways in N. Sulawesi

Harry Bhaskara and Jongker Rumteh, The Jakarta Post, Buyat/Manado/North Sulawesi

This is the third and the last article in a series on Buyat. John Modeong nonchalantly dips his fingers into a small black plastic pail containing water with silvery liquid mercury floating around at the bottom.

He tilts the pail, almost with affection, to the left and right a number of times as if to weigh its precious content before pouring the liquid into a bluish handkerchief-like cloth. He is not wearing gloves.

This is the work that he has been doing for years, and is his livelihood.

"The liquid mercury is used to extract the gold from the sand," John said.

This stage of the work is close to an end. Before he placed the liquid mercury in the pail, it had been poured into a trommel of about half-a-meter in diameter.

The trommel, normally there are six of them laid out in two rows of three each, was filled with dozens of fist-sized stones, water, the contents of a small bottle of liquid mercury and sand taken from a gold mining site.

The six trommels are rotated by a belt powered by a generator. This process continues for about three hours, before the trommel is reopened, the stones removed and the liquid mercury is recovered, hopefully with gold attached to it. To the layman, the liquid mercury looks exactly the same as it did before being rotated.

After placing the liquid mercury residue from the trommel into the bluish cloth, John squeezed the cloth tightly and produced a solid silver lump of mercury the size of a corn cob.

This is then burned, hopefully leaving behind gold.

"This is 4.6 grams," John said after weighing the gold he had recovered on a tiny set of scales, "it's less than what we usually get."

This was the end result of about four hours of work.

"The gold is 14 carat and is worth about Rp 70,000 per gram on the market," he said.

John is one of thousands of traditional miners operating in Minahasa Selatan regency. Traditional mining in mineral rich North Sulawesi dates back to the 19th century.

No wonder that traditional miners are often accused of damaging the environment due to the accumulation of their mine waste over the years.

"The average income of a traditional miner is Rp 75,000 per day, far above the daily income of a manual worker, which is only Rp 25,000," said Arie Tulangauw in Ratatotok Timur village, near Buyat.

Arie, who hails from Noongan village, about 50 kilometers from Ratatotok, said many people from his village worked as traditional miners as it brought in more money than other jobs.

"Usually, I go home on weekends to be with my family in Noongan," Arie said.

Asked if the liquid mercury posed health hazards, he claimed it didn't.

"I've been working as a traditional miner for more than ten years and I never get sick," Arie said.

Arie works at a mining site that is close to the Newmont mine. In the afternoon when traditional miners return home, some of them pass through the sprawling Newmont concession, which is high up on a hill overlooking Totok Bay.

They are easily identified by the bulky rice sacks tied to the front bumpers of their jeeps. The sacks contain earth to be processed at the traditional mining sites.

A favorite spot for traditional miners is about 14 kilometers from Buyat Bay.

The miners dump their mine waste in the Totok river, which carries it to Totok Bay, which is much wider than Buyat Bay and lies adjacent to it.