You Won’t Believe How They Mine Gold Here! Small-Scale Mining in Kenya

We travel from Vancouver, BC all the way to Kenya to visit small-scale gold mining operations and demonstrate safer, mercury-free ways to recover gold. After nearly 24 hours of travel to Nairobi and a long drive across the country to the gold fields near Migori, we set up a Mount Baker shaker table and begin running local miners’ ore to show how gravity concentration can separate gold without mercury. In this video, you’ll see the full process used by local artisanal miners: hand-dug shafts, narrow underground workings, ore sacks hauled from depth, hand sorting, jaw crushing, ball milling, sluicing, panning, mercury amalgamation, and gold buying. We go underground into a hard rock gold mine where miners follow narrow mineralized reefs through schist, working with hammers, chisels, buckets, ladders, timbers, and incredible determination. Some of these miners are recovering ore from veins reported at strong grades, with work done almost entirely by hand. We also spend time with the women who play a major role in the surface recovery process. They crush, dry, mill, sluice, pan, amalgamate, and sell gold concentrates — often while working long hours for very small amounts of gold. The video shows why mercury is still used in many small-scale mining communities, how it is handled in open pans and burned off in the open air, and why better recovery methods are so important for health, safety, and long-term sustainability. Along the way, we introduce improved sluice boxes and demonstrate how even material considered waste can still contain fine gold when run through a better recovery system. The miners improvise, adapt, and immediately begin finding ways to use the new equipment with their existing ball mills, tailings ponds, and water systems. The excitement from the community shows just how much difference a simple, efficient, mercury-free tool can make. This journey also follows the gold beyond the mine site, from raw ore and concentrates in Kenya to the gold trade and massive jewelry displays of the Dubai Gold Souk. It’s a rare, ground-level look at the human side of gold mining: the labor, risk, ingenuity, family livelihoods, environmental challenges, and the opportunity to improve recovery without relying on mercury. If you’re interested in hard rock mining, artisanal gold mining, ore processing, gravity concentration, shaker tables, sluice boxes, mercury-free gold recovery, or the real supply chain behind small-scale gold, this video gives an unforgettable look inside Kenya’s gold fields. Check out our Shopify and eBay stores for ore, specimens, cabochons, and more from our mines: Shopify: https://mbmmllc.myshopify.com/ eBay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/mtbakerminingandmetals For more info please email or call: Email: info@MBMMLLC.com Phone: 360-595-4445 Website: http://www.mbmmllc.com/ Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/MBMMLLC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MBMMLLC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mbmmllc/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBMMLLC #goldmining #geology #earthscience