I came across several young women dressed in sarongs and T-shirts, standing in shallow pits with about six inches of coppery water at the bottom. They were not kin to each other but worked in a group to keep safe. Sexual assault by male artisanal miners, négociants, and soldiers was common in mining areas. The women said they all knew someone who had been shoved into a pit and attacked, the likely cause of at least some of the babies strapped to teenage backs. Sexual assault was a scourge in almost every artisanal mining area I visited.
