Dirt and Dollars This Holiday Season, part deux

         Right around the same time The Times, journalistic paragon of the world, ran its baseball dirt for sale add,  RockCenter, the MSNBC  TV program hosted by Brian Williams, aired a  show called “A Poisonous Mix: Child Labor, Mercury and Artisanal Gold Mining in Mali,”   on the topic  of child artisanal gold mine workers  in Mali.   There are, according to this show, 20,000 kids working the mines of Africa’s third largest gold producer.  The conditions are horridly dangerous for children of all ages who strike at rock with pickaxes, lug around big bags of ore, and are exposed to harmful levels of mercury.   Needless to say, this kind of work is not for the kiddies.  They are at much higher risk for long term spinal injury, and so on and so forth. And some of them die on the job.  Some children are not paid at all, some are paid a few dollars, and some are paid in dirt. Yes, that’s right. Bags of dirt.  But oh, there could be gold in this dirt. Ah, now it makes sense.   So in this holiday season, boys and girls of all ages there are at least two roads that lead to dirt and if you are not fortunate enough to receive the $249 box of baseball dirt courtesy of the NY Times, there’s always Mali.