Life on a Brazilian River Dredge

 March 14, 2012:  Ten amazing days ago, when I was suppose to leave with the Bedford returning to Georgetown, I instead accepted an invitation to stay with 4 Brazilians living on a river dredge in Issano, who are on a quest to find gold.  With this said, my plan of omitting Portuguese out of my mind until I get back to the Amazon River had to be reworked, since all individuals on the dredge; spoke, thought and dreamt Portuguese. 

Though the dredge was inoperable during my stay, they did anticipate it will be functional in another week so that they can leave the riverbank, to go fishing for gold.  For 24 hours a day it will operate, stirring up the soil below as it is sucked up through a long 10 ton metal straw, where the yellow powder is separated and the rest is released back into the water.  In a way I am glad it wasn’t working when I was there, letting me overload my senses of sight, hearing and touch while on the river without the machinery contaminating it.  Where we were, also gave me a nice opportunity to observe an Indian family, who pulled up along the riverbank on a canoe then set up a makeshift home for a few days before eventually moving somewhere farther along the river.

Since I grew up outside the “Motor City” not a mining town, I didn’t know anything about mining when I arrived on the dredge.  I did what little I could to help the Brazilians such as teach them English, translate, provide them with many laughs and gave them an extra set of hands when needed.  It took me 14,400 minutes to come to the realization that I should cross gold prospector off my list of possible future careers if I want to make it to the age of 40, as dodging serious injury seemed to be a daily event for me - not recalling when in my adult life I have become such a magnet for large metal objects wanting to smash into me.

A short walk away was downtown, Issano.  It was a living ghost town with 1 police station, 1 school, 1 gas depot, 1 medical clinic, 1 store and 2 kiosks.  I was told that back in the 1980’s it was a booming town, but now…it has slowed down considerably.  The town itself only houses a handful of Indians, with the majority of 500 +/- Indians living upstream in communities along the river.

It is supposedly common in these areas to be addressed by names that were not given at birth.  I myself was given two different names along the way.  “White Boy,” was what I was called by the truck drivers and for those on the dredge it was, “Gringo.”  It was no problem for to call someone “German” or “Alligator” but I myself had a difficult time with names such as “Blacky” or “Fat Man.”  I guess it takes some getting used to.

Meeting a local man who is an independent prospector, he invited me to go with him on a boat up the river to meet his friends that work for small and also big mining operators who pull the golden power from the land.  I have been to plenty of mines in my lifetime but most of them are underground where it is hard to see the damage that is hidden by a blanket of untouched soil.  The type of mining I saw today floored me because I it was so easy to see the open bleeding wounds mining has done to such a beautiful region of the Amazon.  It is not just what it does to the land that is disturbing, it is what it does to the people who caught this disease called “gold fever,” leaving there families for months at a time in hoping to strike it rich.  In their search for the golden powder, a quite a few of them found more than that…they found malaria and even worse, dengue fever in the process.

With Malaria being the leading cause of death in Guyana, the first few days I was being a good paranoid North American boy doing what I was told by the brains at the CDC (Center for Disease Control).  So I would wear a long sleeve shirt, pants, socks and shoes in addition to coating my skin with a nice shower of 40% DEET every few hours - when almost everyone else wore nothing but shorts and sandals.  Then I thought…enough.  I was still careful but no longer did I wear my long sleeve shirt in insane temperatures, nor did I wear my shoes, due to getting tired fighting off the thief hiding in the mud who tried to steal them every time I took a step off the dredge.

I stayed on the river dredge for the past 10 days, but needed to pry myself away today.  With the complete work crew arriving tomorrow, there would be an oversupply of hands and limited space.  Even though I didn’t understand a lot of what was being said during my stay, it was hard for me to leave today…I will miss all of them and their kindness.