Vanadinite
A small piece of vanadinite sits on a plate with geodes and quartz atop a shelf in our hallway. Slender fins of barite, grading charcoal to soft gray, overlap each other at various angles, embedding white calcite and translucent, burgundy vanadinite crystals glittering like mica.
Vanadinite isn’t rare but this particular specimen which came from an unregulated mine near Midelt, Morocco serves as a reminder of the world’s asymmetry.
Our resourceful driver, Yasim, conjured up a local guide, Kedell, who we picked up at a corner gas station at dawn. Kedell has an infectious smile and features more that of sub-saharan Africa than the Middle East.
“Do you speak English?”, was our first question.
“No”
“Spanish?”.
“Yes”. And, with the remnants of a common language, we were off into the arid plains of ochre and red rock, famous for mineral extraction both legal and unauthorized.
Our first stop was at a flat expanse pockmarked with vertical holes at least 30 feet deep with men squatting beside them, sorting through piles of detritus for minerals to sell. The mines are dug by hand. A man lowers himself into a narrow slot and painstakingly shovels dirt into a bucket hauled to the surface by his partner. There are no hazard warnings, no shoring, no barricades. We step cautiously about the site and wonder how the free roaming donkeys avoid the pitfalls.
As we approach, men crushed around, thrusting trays of minerals at us, chattering unceasingly. Only a few tourists happen this way so we don’t know how they flog their hard-earned minerals – possibly at town markets or hawked along busy highways.
These men scratch at the dregs of no longer commercially viable mines, a highly dangerous undertaking, providing only a meager existence. This is true throughout the world. The environmental damage and the human cost of unregulated mining is extreme, well documented and largely ignored.
We venture further into the desiccated landscape to the banks of the Moulauya River roaring through the narrow Gorge’s d’Aouli. The road is steep, rough and slow but we finally arrive at an abandoned mine built by a french company in the 1930s.
The deserted town – an apparition of a leafy, pastel Parisian street – hugs the narrow road skirting the river. The former administration buildings, theater and restaurant are fading but not fully decayed. Behind these buildings meant for the privileged French administrators, the town creeps up the steep banks like a collapsing lego monument. The social elite usually claim high ground to look down upon the rest of us. But, there are exceptions. In this case, the less-privileged you were, the higher up you lived and worked.
Kedell grew up here in a small utilitarian stone house over 660 vertical feet above the river.
“My mother and sisters walked down these steps to fetch water from the river”, he tells us, pointing out a decaying staircase enveloped in brush.
We imagine the women swaddled from head to foot in long robes, lugging heavy buckets up the steep stone staircase equaling the height of the Seattle Space Needle.
“How many times a day did they have to go for water?”
“As many as it took”, Kedell replies.
