Deep Down The Gold Town: Obuasi

10h ago | Source: Prof. Kwesi Yankah

Following my travelogue in the post on Obuasi, here now comes the conclusion: our perilous descent into the belly of Mother Earth. This was a 1988 initiative by the Legon Dons Club, with the blessings of Vice Chancellor, Akilagpa Sawyerr:

‘To be a man is not easy,’ says a tro-tro adage. Preparing for the ordeal, I would have been surprised to find a mining costume tailored to my size. As it were every accessory I tried on, was oversize– boots, goggles, helmet, overall. Curiously peering at us giggling, were mine workers chit chatting. You could read in their grins the impish joy of seeing elite visitors on their way to ‘hell’ underground, “so you tell the big men to increase our pay”.

As we stood in the cage waiting to be lowered down the abyss, I was praying for a last-minute hitch and a relief announcement such as, “Sorry visitors, owing to circumstances beyond our control, your trip underground has been postponed indefinitely. Go and remove your oversize outfits and return to your mothers and fathers.” None such message came. The look of resignation in our faces ahead of the trip, however, concealed the comfort of not being alone in fear. Descent through such cages could not have been be a jolly ride: the metallic jingle, jerky vibration, croaky noise down the corridor, and a zoom sensation through your nerves. If this was a plane trip, I would have begun reading instructions for emergency exit.

Not too long a ride, though. We were there in no time, but wide-eyed. Stepping out of the cage, was only the beginning; you needed to walk to your ‘office’ to see miners at work. This to our dismay was not two hundred meters away. Just when sweat began dripping and air supplies trickled, our guide had the audacity to advise that we had a mile to go!! Unperturbed, we ploughed through the rocky corridor along a loco rail line – soggy, slippery surfaces; random swampy spots, islands of shrubs, leaps over puddles, and sudden trips and falls. Every now and then, there were yells of, ‘guys are you coming,’ directed at slow pals trailing behind. A distant response of ‘yeees’ from the rear, often meant ‘nooo’; they had either paused to rest, or crawl.

Above us, logs of teak trees had been used as props, to support ‘roofs’ from falling; but you stopped weighing the prospect of a roof collapse or earth tremor.

It was edgy seeing miners toil underground – drilling through gold-embedded rocks, cutting pipes, scooping, blasting the mine, going up and down the ladder that links the cross-cuts, and groping through corridors. To them, that was a daily routine. To me, that was my first and last!

Deep down I spoke to some underground workers, a spanner boy, machine driver, blast man, and two shovel boys. “Our work is more difficult than a soldier’s; it’s easy to fall in a suit and hurt yourself, or be bruised in a ground fall after blasting the rock. I have been here for a few years, and seen at least six deaths. Injuries are countless,” said one. “It’s tedious and dangerous, sometimes climbing on steps or ropes while carrying a dynamite from the twelfth to the twentieth level.”

Working at the mines is tedious but profitable too; after all, you work on GOLD. But I kept wondering about the kind of temptation that came the way of workers that have access to the precious stone. After all, it was known that partly through smuggling in Ghana, Togo which produced no gold exported 75 million dollars worth the year before.

Yes; tempting; but to some workers, it was not even a question of temptation; to steal gold was sometimes the incentive to work underground. Some had made it silently; others had either been clamped in jail or were awaiting trial at the tribunal.

“We are not thieves as such, but at least, you shouldn’t miss a blade or two of the stuff; that is the lowest measure one can settle for,” a worker confided.

“It’s sometimes a question of luck,” another said.

“The arrest of gold thieves is a daily phenomenon,” said Mr. Tieku, Chief Security Officer. Thieves are sometimes arrested with pieces of raw quartz. Others have it in the form of an amalgam – they extract the ore from the powder with the help of mercury. They are sometimes caught with the stuff concealed in boots, socks, under the tongue, testicles or in the anus. Sometimes, we have to take suspects to the hospital for rectal examination.”

Some suspects are thus supervised as they lay the golden egg.

I was told of a case in which a miner bent down to unlace his shoes for inspection. As he bent, a two-inch string hanging down his anus betrayed him. The string was tied to a wrapped concentrate, ready to be laid at his human hatchery.

I could not resist putting to the chief security, a rather silly question.

“Sir, you are the chief security officer of one of the richest gold mines in the world; how do you overcome the temptation of stealing or conniving? After all, you can easily become a billionaire.”

Mr. Kofi Tieku, B.A. Hons, and a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, smiled.

“Well, I must confess, the pressure on me to steal is great but I always resist the temptation. I have been called a fool several times by people for not conniving to steal, but I highly treasure my personal image. There have been a few threats on my life for my firmness, but I won’t give up. And I know that I of all, will be shot if caught….”

Our surface dialogue meant we had safely exited underground and returned to surface to breathe fresh air. The ordeal was over at long last. Legon Dons patted shoulders, shook hands, and gave hi-ups in a collective celebration of heroism. We had survived life in the earth’s belly.

That was not all; a final incident almost killed our joy.

As we were leaving the security gates, the metal detector which had been silent throughout the checks, sounded an alarm on me, the team leader! Did I pick a piece of ore in error? Had I been framed up? Anticlimax in the offing? The security was alert; palpitation began; everybody turned in my direction. A thorough check was conducted on me; and the truth was out.

My bunch of keys brought from Legon had triggered the alarm and my subsequent ‘arrest.’ The Dons, now relieved, then burst into peals of laughter:

Ha-ha- ha-ha-ha-ha.

Agyeeei!!

kyankah@ashesi.edu.gh