INTERVIEW & CLIP: New Discovery show tracks two Americans mining for gold in Africa

Jungle Gold, Discovery Channel’s latest reality effort, follows two Americans on their quest to strike it big in Ghana, Africa. After losing hundreds of thousands in the real estate collapse, George Wright and Scott Lomu tried to find the silver lining — actually it was more of a gold lining. The two friends set up an extensive mining operation in Ghana, and it’s been the hunt for gold ever since.

The Discovery Channel show, which airs Friday nights at 10 p.m., follows the two men in their adventures to put food on the table for their families back home. Recently, Hollywood Soapbox interviewed Wright and Lomu about their experiences. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

When did it get difficult for you? When the real estate market went down the tubes?

Scott Lomu: George and I were in the real estate world back in Utah. We, like everybody else, kind of made hay while the sun shined. We did really well, made a lot of money, and … starting in about ’07 is when things started to get really bad. We lost a lot of money. I mean we lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in a space of just a few months.

We were a little bit overly optimistic. We had hoped that the market would recover. We thought it was going to be just a blip. We didn’t realize that it was going to be so bad for so long. So in about December of ’09, we came up with the hair-brain scheme to go out and flip gold in Ghana. We didn’t think about mining it out. We just thought about going and buying it and bringing it back to the States for a profit.

So one thing led to another. We got out to Ghana, realized that most of the gold deals out there are an absolute scam. So [we] scraped together what little money we had, which was provided by George, and bought a little bit of mining equipment, and that’s where we began, in early 2010.

And it’s been a struggle every day since then, being under-funded and basically not being miners in any sense of the word. George and I always say, ‘We don’t want to offend any miners out there by calling ourselves miners, because we’re not.’ We’re just a couple of a guys trying to provide for their families. And the opportunity to go mining in Ghana was basically just the right opportunity at the right time. It was a reach for both of us, but we jumped at the opportunity.

Bring me through that first day in Africa, when you landed in the airport. What is going through your mind?

George Wright: We landed May 17, 2010, and this is after about five-and-a-half months of thoughts and planning and preparation. … And we would always go on a rotation. There’s me, Scott and then we had a third partner whose name is Wally. And on the first trip, Wally and I went together. And keeping in mind, of course, that we had a pretty large sum of cash on our person. I had a switchblade in my pocket, and Wally had a switchblade in his pocket. And when you get off that plane, it’s really, first and foremost, it’s an insult on the senses. There’s humid[ity]. There’s a certain pungent smell, mostly because when they take the trash out, they burn it in Ghana. So you have an interesting smell that permeates the air.

And then you just have everybody is coming toward you, looking to help you for a fee. And whatever it is you need help, if it’s carrying your bags, getting a taxi, riding in a taxi, finding a place to stay, finding gold, finding jewelry, clothes, finding a mining operation. I mean you will get offered all of this. And you can get offered all that within the first 24 hours. Then you have to, from there, figure out what’s true and what’s not. What’s real and what isn’t. What’s going to potentially help you provide for your family, and what’s going to make you absolute[ly] destitute.

Now two-and-a-half years later, is it still successful for you? Are you able to provide for your families better?

Lomu: Anybody that goes out to Ghana pays a price. Now, sometimes it’s a financial price. Sometimes it’s time. But basically you’ve got to get over there and figure out how things are done.

George and I, we struggled a lot over the past couple of years. And every minute that we’ve been out there has been a trial, but the potential reward is so big that it’s hard to walk away from. We’ve pulled out enough gold out of the ground to where you get it in your blood. And you do, you catch the gold fever. You stay out there despite all the dangers and all the crap that you have to go through because the payout can be so big.

And, yeah, we’ve had some moderate success. But to say the least, we definitely haven’t solved all our financial problems by any means. We still have a long way to go. We’re making really good progress, and we know that one day this is going to work out for us, that we’ll be able to take care of our families.

And ultimately our presence there also helps the Ghanaians. You know, they don’t have a lot of big, heavy machinery. So we bring in the equipment, and it’s able to help us and it’s also able to help the people of Ghana. So we consider it a win-win, and the more successful we are, the more success that the local people that we work with will have as well.

Wright: The Ghanaian people have access to so much land. And beneath … anywhere from 15 to 25 feet of ground, of dirt, beneath it really does reside the solution to not only their problems, but our problem. But the problem … is getting to it. And, like Scott said, they don’t have the equipment or the means to ever get to it. And so they do the best they can.

They farm on top of it. But when Scott and I come in, we compensate them 10 times what they would make on the crops for removing the crops. And then we compensate them with the gold we pull out of the ground, but again going back to the root of your question, are we able to solve the problems? Has it been able to pay off? Our short-term goals still to this day are provide for our family, in the sense of putting food on the table and paying the electric bill and paying the mortgage. Those are our short-term goals, meaning we’ve not obtained the goals of ultimate success in our point of view, which is to be able to set our families up and our children up with the lives that we would hope for them.

The absolute best that we can provide for them, we’re still working on that. Everyone always asks us, ‘How much gold did you get?’ That’s the wrong question. The right question to ask me, ‘Did you get enough gold?’ People have to watch to find out.

Is it difficult to spend so much time in Africa away from the family?

Lomu: Yeah, we get asked that question a lot, because we are at our very core family men. People always say, ‘If you’re such a family guy, why do you leave your family so many months at a time?’ Like I said earlier, the opportunity in Ghana just fell in our lap. It was the right opportunity at the right time to take care of our families — not only our family, but the family of our third partner, Wally. Wally died a year ago.

So we’re out there to take care of our families and his. But it’s hard. You know, George has three small kids. I’ve got four small kids. And that’s the hardest part. You always have to remind yourself while you’re out there that you’re out there for a greater purpose. You’re out there for your families. Because all the stuff that happens to you out there, anyone out there for a lesser purpose would tuck their tail between their legs and go home after a month. But we know we’re out there not because it’s a get-rich-quick-scheme, or we’re treasure hunters, or even fame whores. We’re not. We’re out there for a purpose, and that’s always to take care of our family first.

And we know that ultimately it’s going to pay off, and that we’ll be able to provide the type of life that we know is available for our wives and kids. George and I look at this and say, ‘Look, if we do this right, in a couple of years, we could be spending all day every day with our kids.’ And that’s the ultimate goal in this. … And it’s ironic because we have to be away from our kids for so long. But it’s so that in the future we can spend as much time as we choose to with our families.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com