A pork-knocker outpost in Guyana's region 8, from which the freelance miners launch their expeditions into the rainforest. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
Four pork-knockers and their boatman, heading out for three straight months of hard mining in Guyana's Region 8. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
A surface dredge, where land that was once a river bed is dislodged with a jet of water, and panned for placer gold. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
The pork-knockers, not enabled with the high-powered machinery used by the mining companies, use more rudimentary methods to extract the gold, such as surface dredges.This work requires a team to dig down to the clay level of the soil, tearing up the thick rainforest in the process. The clay that might contain gold is then blasted apart with a high-pressure water jet. The water is then pumped through a channel with a sieve bottom and any gold, the densest material, settles in this tray while the waste runs off.
The final stage of surface dredging, during which the fine gold sinks to the bottom of the tray. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
The earth is pumped out of the ground and over a panning device. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
Rather than discussing money in terms of dollars and cents, pork-knockers talk in terms of gold weight — 15 troy ounces to a pound, 20 pennyweight to one ounce. One pennyweight is roughly equivalent to $60."The freelance miners live a very hand-to-mouth existence," Brian Crerar, a mining engineer and former consultant with BP Minerals, told VICE News. "In general what they take out of the ground in a day is just enough to live on. It's when they find those rare mother lodes that they start to make profits.""We're all friends when no one is finding anything," said Roy, "but then if one pork knocker walks into the bar and starts buying beers we know he's found gold. Then it's every man for himself. He will be tracked to his new back-dam and if it produces the place will be overrun within a few days as the word gets out. Gold can't hide."For a fee gold merchants will impart information on what each pork-knocker has sold them. If a pork-knocker hasn't been seen for a while, he's either dead or has struck a mother lode.
A pork-knocker walks through the dense rainforest, toward an informal mining site. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock
Kaiteur Falls, in Kaiteur National Park — an area that is being devastated by mining practices. Photo by Alasdair Baverstock