Gold fever has now spawned 50 violent and lawless mining towns in Burkina Faso alone. The appearance of mines like Buda has coincided with the onslaught of 23 years of drought. In the dry season, between November and May, Buda swells to a makeshift town of 30,000 people crammed into fragile shelters of mats woven from millet stalks draped over sticks of wood. Those who have struck gold display their luck ostentatiously and ride round the mine on shiny new mopeds, wearing fake Rolex watches, sunglasses and new clothes. Women come from as far as Nigeria and Senegal to work in the red light area.
Life is cheap.
On average two men a week die from accidents at the mine and six are seriously injured. Epidemics of yellow fever, meningitis and cholera frequently sweep through Buda and there are no medical facilities to treat diarrhoea, malaria and respiratory diseases caused by the fine white dust which settles everywhere. Local people call them the White Tourists. Behind them, luminous mounds of excavated ore shimmer in the heat beside holes of varying depths. Those that have been abandoned are filled with human excrement.