The face of modern slavery in Malawi: Håvard Bjelland’s best photograph

I stayed in a tent nearby, waking up at 4am to begin the hour-long walk towards the pits. By the time we arrived, the miners had already been working for hours'

I took this photograph last year in northern Malawi. It's part of a project for Norwegian Church Aid, an NGO that documents modern slavery in the mining industry. It's very hard to believe your own eyes when you see what this actually looks like. These miners work in dangerous conditions with very little protective gear. Their salaries are awful and their contracts are unstable, not to mention the terrible health and environmental impacts of such polluting work. But mining is the only option available to the local people: they have no other choice.

I stayed in a tent nearby, waking up at 4am to begin the hour-long walk towards the pits. By the time we arrived, the miners had already been working for hours.