Winners and losers in Mongolia's mining gold rush
They call them ninjas: driven by lack of opportunity, tens of thousands of Mongolians, including children, are engaged in illegal gold mining, often in extremely harsh and dangerous conditions, writes Zigor Aldama
Even if there were an old-type thermometer in place, it would be unable to correctly reflect how cold it is in Zaamar, a central Mongolian town of unpaved roads and wooden houses. At 40 degrees Celsius below zero, the mercury would freeze. But that doesn't really matter, because, regardless of the temperature, the "ninjas" don't rest.
Armed with rudimentary tools, they hollow out the steppe in search of its most precious mineral resource: gold. And there are many of them; various studies claim that up to 300,000 people, 10 per cent of the population living in a country four times the size of Japan, have at some point in their lives been involved in the search for gold. Currently, the government estimates, about 100,000 Mongolians illegally mine up to five tonnes of gold each year.
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Ganzorig, who prefers not to give his full name, is one of them. As he digs, with a pick and shovel, in the frozen ground outside Zaamar, he responds in monosyllables. He looks up from about five metres below the surface, sweat frozen in his eyelashes. Despite the conditions, he laughs heartily and often. When the partner he's working with hauls a bucket of soil to the surface, Ganzorig takes the opportunity to climb out of his hole and smoke a cigarette.
"It's not been a good day so far," he acknowledges. "But this job is better than trading cattle." And he should know; until a couple of years ago, Ganzorig was one of the nomads who inhabit Mongolia's northeast. He lost most of his herd during the winter of 2010, remembered as the terrible " dzud", then decided to sell the rest and follow the advice of a friend who worked as a ninja.
