Working Boy
In the infamous salt mines at Taodenni, 2005
A teen-aged boy sits under the layer of salt that forms the mine’s excavated wall. In a way, he is a miner because he helps his father mine their claim. Most likely he does little jobs like helping his father to move the 60lb. slabs of salt, make tea, cook the food. He wouldn’t be skilled enough to mine the salt as the slabs must be perfect to bring the highest price.
He had time to accompany me and show me around the former prison colony. There isn’t a lot to see. The mines are pits, open to the dull, gray sky. It looks as if he is in a cave here because the side of the pit has been carved out to extract the layer of salt which is about 4 feet in height. There is a layer of dirt above and below the salt layer. The miners do not dig down, they dig laterally.
Here is a salt mine at Taodenni:
http://www.rosemarysheel.com/archives/taodenni
The miners live in huts made of salt. It’s not as weird as it sounds. They make blocks of salt and put them together as if they were building a brick house. Inside it is like any tent or humble home. Blankets are used as to sit on, to eat on and to sleep on. They cook using a cannister of compressed gas. Water is trucked in from Mauritania by young men who are not afraid of the Sahara. Food and other supplies (cigarettes, tea and sugar are vital) are trucked in as well. The trucks didn’t look as if they could make it across the sands, but they did. We did see one abandoned truck when we were in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps the crew was rescued as the truck had given out on a well know smuggler’s route.