What is emerging now is a picture more complex than the headlines suggest. With the Zama Zamas (informal miners) gone, local businesses that thrived from their presence—whether legally or not—have collapsed. Taverns, salons, bottle stores, and rental homes sit abandoned or operating at a loss. In the words of one local resident, “You can just smell hunger in Khuma.”

More technically, it's an evaporation pond with a  deceptive tranquillity that hides a toxic threat. These ponds are laced with uranium, lead, copper, arsenic, and other heavy metals. In this same water, children swim, livestock drink, and runoff silently leeches into the lives of the surrounding communities.