here are two kids in this district. Two, in a community of this size! When I was a kid in ’65 there were loads of children here. There were 175 throughout the village. Us kids, we would do what kids do. We rode our scooters. There were no age limits back then. I got my first scooter in ’66. We would scrump carrots too—we’re too far north, so apples won’t grow here. We would pull them up and run like crazy. We just ate them straight out of the dirt.
My kid likes it here. It’s so free. Nobody cares if you’re not 16 when you’re out on your scooter. If you’d go to a bigger place there would always be someone checking up on you, noticing if you’re doing something wrong. Here, nobody cares.
It’s been five years since the mine closed, and it’s almost as if people have suppressed that it ever even existed. But it was full throttle right up until the last day. We were shooting as much the last day as any other day. Just as many tons had to be taken out.
Some people have stayed behind. If you have built a family here it’s not so easy to just up and leave. Sure, some people are living off of unemployment benefits. There are all kinds, and besides I don’t think they always have that much of a choice. Some people got jobs on mines further away, and they commute. I’m doing project-based mine work, and I’ll tell you one thing, if I got offered my old job back, I’d never take it.
Right now I’m working 11 days, and then I’m free 10 days. It’s a 700 kilometre trip, so when I’m working I live there. I do double shifts. All extra costs for travelling and keeping an extra apartment included, I still make a proper profit. And I mean proper. I’m actually making about €3.000 per month now. And I should go back to back to slaving for €1.500 per month? No way. No way. But others haven’t been so lucky. They’ve kept their old employment, but have been moved to a new mine. So all they got was a lot of hours on the road and an extra place to pay for.
I swear, if the mining companies had the chance to bring up all the ore from the ground in one day they would. They wouldn’t care that there wouldn’t be any metal in the future or anything. If they could, they would. If this country got the chance to sell all our fresh water, they would. It doesn’t matter who is in the government, if they just got enough money for it they would do anything.
RENÉ
