Etiopia - Redux

Ethiopia, Danakil. The salt mines of Lake Assal. A portrait of Mohamed Ali (Afar ethnic group), 46 years old, who lives in Hamed Ela. In the pit there are two categories of workers: the extractors, the "fokolo", who with just two long wooden poles raise big slabs of salt. The extractors are almost always Tigrinya, and are Christians. Basically, they are people arriving from the plateau surrounding the Danakil. The Afars, the Danakil nomads, on the other hand, prefer to carve the salt slabs: they are called "hedele", carvers. The salt burns the carvers’ hands, the scars of each wound opens again and again, their fingers are bony, corroded by the salty water.