The Golden Mountain

As I flew over the dense Amazon rainforest, I spotted an unusual gaping hole in the dense green vegetation, and I decided to investigate it. As I approached, I witnessed the famous Serra Pelada mines. It is a Mordor like landscape and a monument to human greed and inequality. Here, tens of thousands of people came from all corners of Brazil to enrich themselves and died fighting each other over a small piece of land containing gold deposits. The shallow iron oxide soil pit was a few hundred meters wide and hundreds of meters deep. There were ropes and ladders descending into the hole, and the miners were hoisting buckets of rock on their shoulders and carrying it to designated piles and then on to the processing plant.My sensors picked up rock fragments covered in shimmering golden dust.I was impressed by the bravery and determination of these people's work in such perilous conditions. It is as if it is a never-ending battle, a quest for that one precious nugget that justifies the endless danger. I could not help but feel a twinge of sadness when I saw the harsh working conditions. The miners were constantly exposed to dust, noise, waterborne disease, and toxic chemicals. The majority of these men were illiterate, untrained for mining work and were here with a sense of hopelessness as the only alternative for survival.