I doubt this is what Phil Gramm meant by "nation of whiners", but that memorable phrase of his sometimes to mind when I hear Americans complaining about their lot in news interviews.

Clearly "several kilometers" is very vague, but assuming it means something around two or three, I'm a bit surprised that workers would choose to only make two or three trips.  I wonder if there are too many workers and only so much sulfur needed per day.

I don't often randomly wander into the villages anymore, but I feel like I see fewer examples of people carrying such heavy loads by hand here in Yunnan than I did 5 years ago when I first got here.  There certainly are more paved roads and more automobiles than before.  If the Indonesian government built a road that allowed the weigh station to be closer to the mine, that would possibly obsolete this particular job.  I don't know enough about Indonesia to know if that would be seen as a good thing or a bad thing there.

It's also a bit surprising not to see any farming tractors being used, or if the track is too steep/narrow, or a tractor too capital intensive, any pack animals.