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Shakari bazaar, Dhaka. It is midnight. Mohamed Nuru and his men wait for the streets to empty in order to start working. They are ‘nehari wallahs’ or dust diggers.
Shakari bazaar is the largest gold market of Bangladesh, a district where gather the jewelers of the country, most of them Hindu. Every day a great number of jewels are made and in this occasion, tiny particles of the noble metal escape from numerous workshops gathered in several multi-storey buildings. And it is this golden dust for which are looking the nehari wallahs.
It is near 2 am in the morning when Mohamed, Sorel, Jahangir and the others begin to sweep, clean every hidden recess, every channel of the corridors onto which the shops look filling their containers of all the waste they find. They also occasionally go into the sewers to collect the dust taken away by the water.
Few hours later, the waste is carefully washed in a small room occupied partially by a pool of blackish water. In the end, only a small quantity of grey sand remains, the golden reflections of which let guess the presence of the gold. Once collected using acid and mercury, it will be immediately sold.
Mohamed began at the age of 25. It is his father who taught him the job, which he held himself from his own father. As for his sons, they go to school and he does not want them to take over. Business is not good at the moment. More expansive becomes the gold, less orders there are. Fewer orders mean less dust.
Shakari bazaar is the largest gold market of Bangladesh, a district where gather the jewelers of the country, most of them Hindu. Every day a great number of jewels are made and in this occasion, tiny particles of the noble metal escape from numerous workshops gathered in several multi-storey buildings. And it is this golden dust for which are looking the nehari wallahs.
It is near 2 am in the morning when Mohamed, Sorel, Jahangir and the others begin to sweep, clean every hidden recess, every channel of the corridors onto which the shops look filling their containers of all the waste they find. They also occasionally go into the sewers to collect the dust taken away by the water.
Few hours later, the waste is carefully washed in a small room occupied partially by a pool of blackish water. In the end, only a small quantity of grey sand remains, the golden reflections of which let guess the presence of the gold. Once collected using acid and mercury, it will be immediately sold.
Mohamed began at the age of 25. It is his father who taught him the job, which he held himself from his own father. As for his sons, they go to school and he does not want them to take over. Business is not good at the moment. More expansive becomes the gold, less orders there are. Fewer orders mean less dust.
- Copyright
- Agnes Montanari
- Image Size
- 2960x1970 / 3.1MB
- Contained in galleries
- Dhaka gold diggers
