The following year, they tried again, on the land of a Ghanaian Mormon bishop. It was another disaster. The Mormon miners submitted a proposal to Raw TV, the British company that produced the program, and waited.
In November , two things happened. Macias took his own life, and the wheels were set in motion for their star-crossed show.
It described how miners were regularly killed or injured thanks to unsafe practices , with dying when one unlicensed mine flooded, and how cyanide, lead and mercury, used to extract gold — then dumped in rivers — poisoned communities. There were reports of armed robberies in Chinese mining camps as locals and foreign rivals fought for land. The chief warned that if they fought the miners, they would be killed. They forfeited the cash and moved to a less profitable site.
It may have been their worst nightmare, but it made gripping TV. It was a life or death situation. Am I supposed to feel bad for their debt as they exploit Africans? The show premiered in the US in October to widespread horror, particularly from African Americans. Viewers claimed the show was racist, portrayed locals in outdated colonial stereotypes, and exploited impoverished Ghanians for money and ratings.
Petitions called for its cancellation and Wright and Lomu were attacked on social networks and in the media. Most assumed they were mining illegally. Onscreen, an overweight guy with a wizardly goatee was struggling to fix the motor of an excavator. Snow-covered peaks rose in the distance behind him. It was January , and Lomu had stumbled onto the first season of Gold Rush , a Discovery Channel reality show that follows three men from Oregon as they mine for gold in Alaska.
He was standing on his bed in boxer briefs as his wife lay beside him and laughed. That summer, the men resumed their former routine, traveling to Ghana in shifts. The new operation went as poorly as the first. They got through it by dreaming up episodes for their nonexistent reality show. The Lomu brothers then drew up a three-page final draft outlining the premise and sample episodes, in which three American entrepreneurs in dire financial straits would grapple with Ghanaian tribal chiefs, gold robbers, rival miners — and each other.
On the night of Nov. She was crying hysterically. Lomu knew his friend had experienced post-traumatic stress from his tours in Afghanistan.
He later learned Macias had become dependent on pain medication due to injuries he suffered in a roadside bomb attack. Reeling from the news, Lomu flew to Utah the next day. During a layover at JFK, he checked his voicemail and found it full of condolences from friends and family.
Near the bottom, he noticed a message from his brother Bill. Six months later, in May , Wright and Lomu met with the Raw crew inside an opulent conference room at the Golden Tulip hotel in Accra to discuss the projected arc of Season 1. They hoped early struggles would lead to large profits by the end of the episode run, benefiting both the stars and the villages they worked in.
Their timing was perfect. That February, 5 million people watched the Season 2 finale of Gold Rush , continuing its two-year run as the most-watched cable show on Friday nights. Bering Sea Gold , a new offshoot, was averaging 3 million viewers a night.
The influx of Chinese miners had triggered a rise in armed robberies of Chinese mining camps. In , an undercover video published by Al Jazeera revealed Ghanaian children as young as 14 working in Chinese-run mining pits. Laborers were shown polluting water bodies with mercury, which is used to recover gold from other minerals.
These controversies presented possible PR problems. Both Discovery Channel and Raw, which was acquired by Discovery in , declined to comment for this story. Ghana challenged their intentions from the start. When the cast and crew arrived on the first day of filming, however, they found it crawling with Chinese miners.
Furious, Wright and Lomu gathered a dozen local chiefs and tribal elders to solve the dispute. A heated argument ensued. Discovery was so impressed by the clips they upped the season from 10 episodes to The Chinese miners remained on the site, and Lomu forfeited the money he paid for it. Instead, the men joined a mine support company, run by a fellow Mormon, in the nearby village of Romaso.
But once again, the cost of equipment and labor exceeded the meager amount of gold they found. There was also an image problem. Under Ghanaian law, Wright and Lomu could not physically mine. The stars solved the dilemma by essentially pretending to mine, digging in the mud or washing gold by hand when a scene called for it. Other scenes needed no stage-managing. In perhaps the best-known episode from Jungle Gold , an excavator is ripping up an acre of cocoa trees when an irate cocoa farmer named Akwesi emerges from the bush, machete in hand.
Wright quickly ends the fight by locking the farmer in a chokehold, causing him to pass out. A spokesperson for Raw would not comment on whether the farmer was paid. But the incident changed the dynamic in the village.
Akwesi was preparing to harvest his crops when the crew leveled them, he said. Prior to the fight, locals had regarded the cast and crew with friendly curiosity. Afterward, the farmer said, people viewed them more cautiously.
A rosy conclusion to Season 1 looked unlikely. But Alan Reece, a Guyanese mining foreman the men had befriended, discovered a promising alternative in the nearby village of Fahiakobo, a hilltop settlement of around 30 mud huts flanking a red dirt road. In Ghana, non-Ghanaians are allowed to mine on plots of more than 25 acres, known as large-scale concessions. But as Reece explained it, a wealthy Ghanaian who owned land around Fahiakobo was willing to acquire a large-scale license himself and hire Wright and Lomu to mine his property.
Weary of small-scale mining, the men enthusiastically agreed. To raise the rest, they decided to deal gold in the jungle. In the Season 1 finale , Lomu stuffs the remains of their initial investment into his backpack and walks into the bush. Wright and Lomu step out to investigate. Seconds later, a gunshot rings out. On Oct. They watched as the title card flashed onscreen to the sounds of an explosion and a screeching howler monkey.
I have never seen this dude , Marie remembers thinking. Around 2. Wright and Lomu found it hard to watch. The next six episodes unfolded in similar fashion. They cast Wright and Lomu as hardworking family men engaged in a heroic struggle against hostile and uncooperative natives. But regardless of their portrayal onscreen, Wright and Lomu believed they had done more good than harm in Ghana. But many viewers of Jungle Gold thought exploiting Ghanaians was precisely what Wright and Lomu had done.
Focused on the action, the show failed to explain the complicated licensing process, causing many to assume they were mining illegally. Jarred by the response, Wright and Lomu responded to many of them, trying to clarify any misunderstandings.
By the time the season ended, three Change. They had first heard about the show in July , while the cast and crew were still in Ghana filming Season 1. Raw declined to comment on the incident.
The crew had received press accreditation from the Information Services Department, he said. But they had not received permission from the Minerals Commission to film mining lands. It has since been clarified in the wake of Jungle Gold.
Socio-economic inequality, limited education and employment and inadequate provision of services leave some people vulnerable to neocolonial banditry. The stark, unfortunate truth is that a people failed by a government rife with misplaced priorities and inadequacy is bound to reap the bitter fruits of that failure. In both cases, we see leaders failing to get to grips with the fundamental issues that create our energy shortage or epidemic of illegal mining. With this lack of leadership, it is not much of a surprise when centuries after their forefathers stole our gold, men like Scott and George can dig up Ghanaian soil and riverbeds and try to take our gold too.
However, when a system is broken and failing its people, the biggest failures are the people who sit and wait for the government to fix it. We need to take responsibility for one another and ourselves. We need to begin to invest in one another and ourselves and re-invest until the developments and changes become apparent.
It is only when we as a people have developed and strengthened our voice that we can truly hold our leaders accountable for their actions.
I see this already taking form in multiple ways. It is present at Ashesi University, a liberal arts college founded in outside Accra.
I see it in Ghanaian companies, like Heel The World, which are redefining how we do business. In the socio-cultural space, musical game changers such as Efya, acclaimed designers such as Christie Brown, and change-makers such as Ahaspora Young Professionals are leading the way. There is a new wave of innovators, activists, writers, and passionate political theorists, and I am so excited by them.
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