"They do the washing and preparing of the minerals. A lot of them, as I say, are living and sleeping in tunnels, which they've been digging through the mountains and so forth, and then there are a few structures, but those structures are controlled by the armed gangs that control the mines and enslave all the people in the mines ....
The jobs that they're doing are divided up in two or three categories. One is simply the digging — digging into the side of mountain or digging down from the top — and you're just hammering away with hammers and chisels and shovels to pull these minerals out. Another job will be hauling those minerals on your back out of the tunnels and out of the holes to take them down to the river, where they'll be handed over to more women workers who will then wash the minerals to get a lot of the clay and other dirt off them. They just put them in giant tin cans with lots of holes poked in the can to shake around in the water and clean them up a little bit. Then there'll be people who put those [minerals] into bags and then those people who carry those bags and stack them up and store them. And then, ultimately, there will be people who are enslaved whose job it will be to put those bags on their back and walk for 20, 30, 40, 50 miles to get them out of there and into the supply chain that brings them to our cellphones."This is a really interesting listen.
All the conveniences we use, somewhere it is costing someone something. I'm working on becoming more aware of the labor involved in procuring a 'convenient' item. The convenient option will always seem like the best option until you start to imagine the risks and movement involved in making them as well as any movements that these items reduce on my behalf.
Becoming a more conscious consumer is part of becoming a better mover. It is all connected!
