Hell's Pit X

At the border of Kawah Ijen, the largest highly acidic lake in the world, in East Java, Indonesia. Ijen is the site of a harvesting operation in which sulfur loads of up 60-90kg are extracted from precipitated rocks around cracks from where ignited sulfuric gas emerge at temperatures up to 600 °C. The rock is carried by hand from the crater floor up the crater rim; then 3km down the mountain to the nearby Paltuding Valley for weighing and get paid. Miners complain of skeletal, respiratory and eye afflictions; their teeth slowly dissolve in the sulfurous vapours; they die of accidents at a rate of 1,5 miners a year - but even if no serious accident arises by an unexpected change of winds or a slippery rock, the long term effects of sulfur gas inhalation and strenuous, continued physical effort mean a certain payback in the older years. Daily salary is around 10USD. I came back in silence, impressed and humbled by what i tried to capture here - the resilience, humanity and suffering of these men in their beautiful and merciless natural setting. This is the last one from a mini series i published on this subject.