Reportage
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As the price explodes, gold is arousing new desires in this West African country. But this gold fever leaves a bitter taste, as in Ouyatouo, a village near the Liberian border, against a backdrop of suspicions of cyanide pollution.
Gray hair, sullen expression, Honoré Goula, seems tired. “I'm sick. My eyesight is failing rapidly, and I have constant headaches. apologizes the chief of Ouyatouo, 20,000 inhabitants, a village (according to Ivorian nomenclature) located in the west of Ivory Coast, 400 meters from the Ity gold mine. Even if he does not associate mining activity with his fragile health, he regrets the effects it has on young people: “They no longer want to cultivate the fields like their fathers. The backwaters and the lowlands of the crops are drying up, it is no longer profitable enough. he laments. Sitting alongside the chief, Daniel, his great-grandson, is a 16-year-old teenager with a melancholic look. Like other young people in the village, he stopped school and dreams of working in the mine. “They told me I was too young,” he sighs, moving towards the gate, from where we can see his buildings. A series of long pavilions which evoke a military camp. Two worlds seem to rub shoulders a few meters apart.
Resourcefulness and survival
From Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d'Ivoire, it takes more than twelve hours to drive to reach the country's oldest gold mine, and for a long time the only one, located around fifty kilometers from the border with Liberia. . The further west we go, the more we come across dusty, teeming and miserable little towns, worthy of a western setting. They often serve as a screen for a rush towards
