An Indonesian gold hunter dreams of better days – in tourism
Fernando Pantow risked his life illegally mining for gold as a teenager, but in keeping with Minahasan tradition, his ambitions – and a boost in regional tourism – seem likely to take him far afield from his home province
Fernando Pantow, a Christian Minahasan, was just 14 years old when he first started work as an illegal gold miner.
Even today, eight years on, he remembers praying as he clambered down the rope on his first job.
“It was dark and damp. After a 12 metre descent, my feet finally touched the ground again. Then I walked along for another 15 metres before reaching a second vertical drop. I had to repeat this another two more times before reaching the rock-face – almost 100 metres or so underground – by which stage I was sweating profusely and gasping for air on a makeshift hose linked to an oxygen tank.”
Having dropped out of school after a bout of typhus, Fernando spent much of the next six years working in the many illegal gold mines located across his home province of North Sulawesi and neighbouring Gorontalo in Indonesia.
Between stints away from his village of Kanonang, he helped his landless farmer parents try to make a living in the rain-drenched hills two hours to the southwest of the bustling provincial capital of Manado, now touted as a second Bali.