FREEFORUM

Herald today: a clan council in the Chatkal BANNED MERCURY after fish died below a gold panning camp.

So there IS gold up there, and the DPI lets the clans keep it?? Who BUYS the gold?? FOLLOW THE GOLD. WAKE UP IRAD

Ak, the gold up there a man carries in a matchbox for a whole summer. Nobody gets rich. Except the matchbox.

Registered for this. I pan. Not saying which stream.

Whole summer, cold water to the knees, and in September a little paper fold with the dust. Mercury makes it faster, yes. It also kills the fish and the boy who heats the amalgam in the yurt. The elders were right.

I was at that meeting. Old men, a lot of shouting, then very quiet, then the ban. Pans and sluices only. Use mercury and you pay and you leave the valley.

WHO BUYS IT

A man. With scales. In a market. I will not say which market, Ak, because then you will go there and shout at him.

Vet note: we saw the dead fish photos at the Center. Two dogs downstream were sick that summer too. Nobody tested them properly, so I will not say it was the mercury. I will say: pans only, please.

My neighbour here in Chicago pans for gold in Wisconsin as a hobby. In nine years he has found about eleven dollars and he is very happy. I will tell him he has colleagues in the Chatkal.

(Ak, before you say it: no, he is not CIA. He is a retired dentist.)

A retired dentist. Who looks for GOLD. Think about it, Amerikanka.

Ak. Read the rules. The dentist stays out of it.

Season open. Water still too cold. Found zero grams, officer.

For the newcomers asking every summer: here is the 2012 ban in the Herald, clan council bans mercury. Pans, not mercury. Zero grams, officer.

Bumping my old thread because nobody in my valley pans gold any more.

Now the boys dig in the old Soviet antimony holes for stibnite, by hand, and carry the stones down in feed sacks. China stopped selling antimony abroad and the price went crazy. A man with a bad back now earns more in a month than I did in five summers. ([HEARD], labelled: the buyers wait on the ISEZ side.)

Horses carry it too. Horses do not ask what is in the sack. I ask.

Please. The old workings are not safe. I am a vet and I have set two human arms this autumn because the nearest doctor was a day away. Shafts from the sixties, nobody has shored them since 1992. A stone is not worth a son.

On the steppe we laughed at you mountain people digging rocks. Then I heard the price a buyer offered my cousin's neighbour. Then I stopped laughing. Then I went back to cattle, because cattle walk to the market by themselves.

OneNews tonight: 46 tonnes of stibnite seized at Talas North Terminal, declared as fluorite. Somebody has very optimistic handwriting.

46 tonnes is a lot of feed sacks. That is not boys with bad backs. That is somebody with trucks. [RUMOUR] trucks with good papers. My guess only. I have no papers. I have a pan.

I carry flour.

The elders in our valley met about the digging. Not a ban, the old holes are not on our grazing, it is not ours to ban. A warning instead: if a man is hurt in the holes, his family pays for the days of the men who carry him down. Out loud, in front of everyone.

The digging slowed. Nobody wants to owe the whole valley.