A boy plays in the water as his parents pan for gold on a rocky bank of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar's...
A boy plays in the water as his parents pan for gold on a rocky bank of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar's northern Kachin State, February 24, 2012. About 100 gold prospectors work along the river at this site on the outskirts of the state capital Myitkyina earning anywhere from $3-12 a day. There are no large nuggets of gold in the rocks and sand of the Irrawaddy. Rather, the prospectors laboriously sift and filter their way down to a fine black silt in which minute flecks of gold can sometimes be found. At the end of the day they process the silt with chemicals to remove the gold. A day's work yields an amount of gold roughly the size of a grain or two of rice.REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun (MYANMAR - Tags: SOCIETY BUSINESS COMMODITIES)