Gold miners work all day long shoveling through tons of dirt. At the end of the day, they are paid one bucket of dirt as their day's wage.
Do you feel lucky?
Of blood and gold in Congo By Mohammed Adow in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo
In the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeast situated close to the Uganda border, thousands of miners are working in muddy pits, extracting sand, mud and rocks in the search for gold.
But they are not getting rich and their work is risky.
As international gold traders begin to cash in on the high demand for gold and precious metals caused by the global financial crisis, little of the high returns ever reach the mining communities.
For miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) decades of gold mining should have provided a ticket to prosperity but in reality it has trapped them in a cycle of violence and poverty.
Al Jazeera recently gained access to gold mines in the Ituri District.
Gold there is found in two forms – either embedded in rock or as loose pieces of varying sizes hidden in the earth or sand, often found deep under river beds.
Most of the mines are operated by artisanal miners.
Every morning 19-year-old Jean Faustin Mandro dutifully shows up for work and toils his way through tonnes of earth. It is the only way he can feed his daughter and wife.
"Work is very hard here but there is no other work for us to do," he told Al Jazeera.
And there is no guarantee he will be payed for his efforts. At the end of the day each labourer is given a bucket of earth from the pit as payment.
It may not contain gold.
Innocent Musubi, another miner, searched through his day's wage-bucket at the end of a long day, but he found nothing. It means he will have to return to his family empty-handed and try his luck the next day.
"Working in a gold mine means you depend on luck to get money," he says. "Some months you can make nothing and other months you can make a lot of money and forget all about the hard work you do," he added.
