Bougainville's Tumpusiong Valley in Pictures-2012

Tumpusiong Valley is the valley that received most of Bougainville Copper Limited's siltation but still it is out there strong with its people enjoying her through every means available.

Welcome to my home valley.

After the long Bougainville crisis, Tumpusiong Valley is trying to cash cropping such things as cocoa as seen here fermentry development in east Tumpusiong.

Alluvial gold is the Tumpusiong Valley's main money earner since 2000. Here a man digs into the hardened silt and rocks to built himself a stock of gravel for panning later

Woman waters her soil-sand mixer on a platform to extract finer silt containing gold

Tumpusiong people are religious. Here a pilgrim cuts  through the polluted Kavarong River on the month of October with the statue of the Virgin Mary

The valley, Tumpusiong is all silted. It will take ages still for erosion to reach the original water bed

The valley is today, with its stock of gold, attracted illegal miners as this US and Chinese operations

Lunch at a local gold miners camp

Miners trying to remove rock out of a pit

A South Bougainvillean miner (top) and his Panguna mate pose on their stock of sediment containing gold. Such stocks go for K500 or so PNG kina for sale

A local panner on process of extracting gold containing fine sand from silt

Gold money doing the wrong things for some. A drunkard man and a woman sleeping on the sides of the Panguna to South Bougainville highway

Kids play soccer on the sediment and gravel

Despite its ills, Tumpusiong Valley is still beautiful to the tourist

Settling back on the silt

People from far off places like Kori camp by the banks of Kavarong and make money from the gold

Changes done by human labour searching for gold

Kavarong River in search of its original river bed; still yet to find

Locals making use of gold money in a fundraiser for their local school

Canteens like this, infests the Tumpusiong Valley

Kavarong River, despite its health risk status, kids enjoy it and later get medication

Making tamatama in a gold miner's camp

Mini-bazaars like this one for a local school makes alot of money for community development

Nagovis men, from South Bougainville in the water, looking for gold in the Tumpusiong Valley