REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Gregory Warner
We all have our breaking points, and in a makeshift hut at the top of a mountain in the jungle I nearly reached mine. I was sitting opposite a military commander who was slowly going page by page through my permission papers. There were five documents in all, each stamped six times by different civilian and military authorities. Just outside the hut, a long line of mine workers also stood waiting. They were charged with various infractions and had come to negotiate their fines. Soldiers use these sessions to extort more money from the men.
It was ten in the morning but the commander was already drunk. He flipped one leg up on the arm of his plastic chair, exposing a rip in his crotch. He reached into the hem of his pants for a box of cigarettes tucked there, pulled one out, and took a long time lighting it. I took a deep breath to stay calm. All I wanted was to get out and start reporting, but I had to wait for this soldier to finish.
We had come too far to turn back now. My journey had begun in Goma, where photographer Thomas Rippe and I had arrived about a week before, hired a translator/guide, and arranged for sleeping bags, tents, and provisions for the journey. Then we'd hitched a ride on a UN helicopter to a jungle outpost in the province of North Kivu, spent a day collecting permission stamps, slept that night in a parish church, hired a car to take us to the end of the road, then walked for two days up a jungle path to Manware, the settlement where the wives and children of the miners live.
Finally we'd hiked up to Bisiye (literally, "the land of powder"), to this hut at the top of the mine, and now we sat in front of a drunken commander and his angry-looking sidekick. "I don't know why they even let you [journalists] in here," the sidekick snarled. "If it were up to me..." He patted the semi-automatic on his lap and grinned.
I wondered the same thing. Why did they let us in there? Finally the commander relented, and we emerged from the hut with his stamp. For the next three days, we were free to go anywhere in the mine and talk to anyone.
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There are two minerals mined at Bisiye, colombite tantalum (also known as coltan) and cassiterite (a component of tin). One or both of these metals is used in almost every technological gadget you own – from cell phones to laptops. My job was to find a single miner and spend a few days with him, trying to understand his work and his life.
Just traversing the mine was treacherous. To get from tunnel to tunnel you have to walk on narrow paths, slick with mud, above steep open pits. Workers pressed by with enormous loads of rocks on their backs. Others shouted at us as they ate or drank. A crowd gathered everywhere we stopped. People badgered us for money and cigarettes. Apparently a rumor had spread that we had arrived to purchase the mine. We were obvious outsiders, and people stared at us wherever we went.
Finally we ducked into one of the tunnels at random. The curious crowd stopped at the mouth of the tunnel, so we were undisturbed as we walked through the darkness to the end. We turned on our headlamps and approached a small man, shirtless, crouched on a narrow ledge over a dark shaft. Breathing hard, he pounded a steel spike into the rock with a hammer. Blow after blow, the spike barely moved. Finally he stopped pounding and looked at us, these white strangers, and said hello.
"Is it okay if we talk to you?" I asked.
"I'd be happy to answer questions from foreigners," he said. "Communication is important between peoples."
I found his old-fashioned manners so surprising after the reception we'd received outside, and I almost sighed with relief. He told me his name was Fidele Musafiri. That he was 35 years old, and had a wife and young daughter living in the settlement at the base of the mountain. He hadn't seen them in a week, he said; he was trying to earn enough money to make the trip back home worthwhile. Most nights he slept here, in the tunnel, a flattened plastic jug for a bed.
The tunnel where Fidele worked was a sort of refuge from the many forces working against him: from the traders selling necessities at exorbitant prices; from the buyers and their crooked scales; from the soldiers and their brutal extortion. There may have been no light here, but there was peace, and there were friends, and there was work. The irony was that the harder Fidele worked, the more mineral he found, the more he became a target, a victim of other people's greed.
But Fidele does not see himself as a victim. Like every miner I met in Bisiye, he hopes — even expects — to strike it rich. It's this hope that has sustained him for the six years he's worked in the mines.
Note: Since I spent time with Fidele, war has broken out in the region. The first gun battle came two days after I got out of the jungle. As I write this, in November 2008, it's not clear how the situation will be resolved. But it's fair to guess that not much will change for Fidele, or for the other miners at Bisiye. Rival groups have been fighting over this territory since before Fidele was born. As long as Western manufacturers continue to purchase the minerals, there will be plenty of people to mine them.
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