A miner rests after a day of hard work in an illegal coal mine. Fann Mountains in Tajikistan are rich in coal, and illegal mining camps often appear next to large official quarries. Conditions in such camps are miserable, safety measures are often neglected, and child labor is still occasionally seen, but the pay is high enough to justify the risk. One of the miners i talked to used to be a school teacher, but chose hard manual labor over his previous qualified job - because the teacher's wage couldn't nearly compete with the profits of digging coal.