Taoudenit
This mine is in the middle of
nowhere, one of the more inhospitable places on earth, yet
men manage to live there several months out of the year.
Well outside the inhabitable belt of Sahara-Sahel where the
nomads graze their animals, Taoudenit is in a 650km radius
of no-mans-land. Few from the south have ever ventured
here, leaving it to the nomads and the miners. The miners
were traditionally the slaves of the transporters and other
exploiters of the mine, now often the descendants of these
same slaves, though free return to Taoudenit to earn a
living, as do other individuals seeking employment.
For several years under the dictator Moussa Traoré,
Taoudenit was also the location of a detention centre for
political prisoners and serious criminals, adding to the
distrust and fear of the place held by southerners. As a
detention site it is criminally inhumane but also ideal --
there is no way to escape; any who tried would die of
thirst. The detention site is now only ruins and did not
interrupt the extraction of salt anyhow, as it was several
kilometres away for the mining sites.
For people concerned with human rights, Taoudenit is still
a delicate topic, for while the miners are free men and go
there voluntarily, some raise questions of exploitation by
merchants selling necessities to the miners. The captive
market with no competition drives prices high. Living
conditions are unimaginably difficult. The heat and
salinity are both so elevated as to make the uninitiated
immediately ill.
Everything is salt. Taoudenit is a huge deposit of salt.
For three hundred square kilometres there is nothing but.
When the miners clear debris off an area and begin cutting
into the good salt, they start by cutting out large blocks
that are then cut into four bars, of which three are
transportable and one is waste. These “waste” bars are used
to construct their lodgings. Few have flip-flops, let alone
gloves, and salt dust permeates everything. The water
collected from a well several kilometres away is salt;
water so salty the camels won’t drink it, but these miners
do, six months out of the year.
Being deep in the desert, Taoudenit is hot during the day
and cold at night. The miners are never comfortable. But in
the summer months (May-July) it gets so hot it is
unliveable. Temperatures regularly surpass 55˚C or 130˚F
There is no money in Taoudenit; they trade. Miners purchase
peanuts, tea, sugar and other staples with bars of salt.
Even their transport is paid in salt. In recent years some
merchants with large trucks will transport a crowd of
miners to Taoudenit at the beginning of the season. Each
man pays his fare with a couple bars of salt, the truck
comes back full of salt.
Some merchants hire miners whom they pay and/or provide for
during their stay, and receive the greater part of their
work as their due, Other transporters make deals with the
private miners already there for a 50/50 share of all salt
transported to Timbuktu.