Black Mamba

Yesterday evening, when I was busy baking pyrite at 650 degrees Celsius, Hans and Jaco went down to the Pongola River to do some fishing. This morning Hans informed me that while Jaco went fishing, Hans was chasing down warthogs (with a gun of course), which apparently arrive in droves after nightfall at the riverbank. The immediate area is actually engaged in a province-ordered cull of both warthogs and bush pigs which have been devastating the local farmers crops as of late.

As Hans was walking back towards the mine (some 300 meters above along a winding dirt road), he came across a rat that scampered out of the shrubbery, over the road, and disappeared into the bush on the other side. Then, following the rat closely, a large snake slithered into Hans' headlamp beam. Turns out it was a Black Mamba, the undisputed deadliest snake in the world. As Hans tells the story, the snake stopped in the middle of the road, turned and looked at Hans as he raised his gun, trembling with fear. The stand-off apparently lasted only a few seconds and the mamba continued into the bush in pursuit of the rat.

This is only the second black mamba sighting in the area since the mine was recommissioned back in June, but it proves that there are a few of them in the area. The good news is that form what I've heard, mambas are just as scared of people as we are of them, so if you make lots of noise while walking through the bush, the mambas will tend to go away long before you reach them. The only thing one must be careful about is if the situation arises where a mamba feels cornered, which is when they become aggressive. And apparently they can easily outrun humans, so that kind of sucks. Of course, Hans' solution is to carry a gun. They make special shotgun rounds called 'snake shots' designed as a lethal spray-shot for large snakes such as the mamba. So if I'm ever mapping out in the bush here in the future, I will definitely insist on one of those. Fortunately my duties now have been limited to mostly the plant and underground.

In other less dangerous news, it took me this long to figure out the 'Klip-wal' is Afrikaans for Stone-ridge or Stone-wall. It makes sense, as the boss' new company name is "Stonewall Mining".

Chakalaka

I've recently made an amazing food discovery, and it's called "chakalaka." It's a traditional South African condiment that I can best describe as a vegetable chili. They sell it in cans here and I've been having it on toast a lot. Traditionally it's served with pap or within a stew/curry type of situation. The taste lies perfectly between your classic American-style chili and a fiery Indian curry. Spicy and delicious!

It's probably fairly difficult to find it canned in stores that aren't located in South Africa, so if you like to cook and want to give it a try...

http://www.recipesworldwide.org/food-type/vegetable-dishes/chakalaka

The spicier the better!

Big Week Of Fun

It's been another extremely busy week at Klipwal, so I'm really looking forward to the weekend. Oh wait, today's Sunday? Work again tomorrow morning? What happened to the weekend? Well, flat tires, helicopters, and rich Canadians happened. Let me explain...

The past week itself was a fairly normal work week consisting of gathering samples, running them over the James Table, and organising the results. I was also writing a report for Lloyd as well as preparing for the big weekend visit from a Canadian investor. Lloyd called on Friday morning and said I was going to be giving a 30-minute presentation on the geology of the mine to the Canadian and his associate, who were going to arrive on Sunday morning in a helicopter. So while others were clearing the mine's helipad and scrambling to find a wind sock, I was writing my presentation.

On Saturday morning, I accompanied Nick who was going into town to pick up a new Land Cruiser we were renting for the weekend to move around our VIP guests. Lloyd was pulling out all the stops for these guys, more so than any of the potential investors that have been through over the past couple of months, so I'm assuming these Canadians have a fair bit of money to invest. Anyway, Nick picked up the Cruiser at the dealership, and I took over the pick-up we drove to town in. I made the obligatory stops at Pick n Pay (grocery store) and the butchers for their amazing biltong (beef jerky), sent of some letters at the post office, and proceeded back to the mine. With all the rain over the past month, the potholes on the way back to Klipwal have only gotten worse, and I managed to go over a couple pretty deep ones on this trip. Then, when I was only a few miles from the mine, my left rear tire exploded after presumably hitting a rock on the dirt road. I've never changed a flat tire on my own before but how hard could it be?

Well, luckily I was spotted by a few local Zulu kids who were hanging out at the bar I happened to stop near, and by the time I got the jack and the tools out, they were hovering over the busted tire. They helped me jack up the car and then we got to loosening the nuts on the tire. After putting the spare tire on and bolting it up, all seemed well until I started letting the jack down. Turns out the spare tire was very flat. Not completely destroyed like the tire we had just taken off, but there was not nearly enough air in it for me to continue driving on. So I ended up calling Petrus at the mine, who eventually arrived with an electric pump. Finally I returned home, thankful for the help of the friendly Klipwal Zulus and Petrus.

Sunday morning I was feeling a bit nervous with the impending presentation hanging over my head, but I knew they would arrive soon and that I knew my stuff, so I went to the office at 9 to practice a bit. Then I got the call from Nick that the helicopter, which was leaving from Johannesburg, was delayed due to the weather. The delay kept getting longer and longer until finally, just after 2 pm, we could hear the chopper blades humming and the helicopter descended from the clouds, making a pass around the mine and eventually landing on the helipad at the top of the ridge next to the main offices.

Lloyd introduced the Klipwal crew and I to the investors Bob and Chris, and we sat down in the board room for me to give the presentation. And I ended up nailing it, if I can say so myself. Bob and Chris were really nice guys too, so that helped. The rest of their stay was spent touring the plant and surface works, but their schedule was too tight for a visit underground. Just like that, they were rushed away back into the helicopter, which flew westward and disappeared into the clouds. The visit on the whole went extremely well, which felt good after everybody had been preparing for it so hard all week. It was kind of like what should have happened in Jurassic Park if the dinosaurs didn't end up escaping and eating Newman from Seinfeld.

Dinner For One

There's not a lot to report from the mine these days with business carrying on as usual. This morning I was running some of my samples over the James Table and began chatting with the guy who was on James Table duty at that time. His name is Nkosinathi, pronounced "Kohs-NACH-i", and he was telling me how he wants to be a sampler so he can go out in the field and down the mine. I felt for him, because it can get a bit old being stuck in the plant all day with the loud noises of the pump motors going. Naturally, we got on the subject of soccer, and when I asked Nkosinathi what his favorite teams were he gave the typical reply: Kaiser Chiefs and Chelsea. The Kaiser Chiefs play in Johannesburg, along with the rival Orlando Pirates. Everyone in this country seems to support either one of those teams. He said he also liked Brazil, and when I asked about his national time he replied, "Of course! Bafana bafana!"

In other news, I have just about finished moving fully into my new digs. I've got a nice couch, a little TV and DVD player, an enormous bathroom, and a generously-sized George Foreman grill that's substituting for a real cooker. Mine is broken at the moment. At some point I'll also have to build a braai area.

Now I don't know how I've forgotten about this, but I've remembered now to tell you about a great comedic discovery I made when I was up in Pilgrims Rest the other week. They were having a movie night in the pub I went to, and as a precursor to the main feature, they first showed the short film entitled "Dinner For One." This British comedy sketch originally written in 1920 and filmed in 1963 has since become a national tradition in Germany of all places, where every New Year, German TV channels all broadcast the 15-minute sketch for everyone to see.

With South Africa having heavy European ties, especially from the Netherlands and Germany, the Afrikaans community celebrates new years much in the same way as the Germans by watching this short. If you have 15 minutes, search for the short film on Youtube with old British comedian Freddie Frinton, I couldn't stop laughing. Same procedure as every year!!

More Illegal Miners

The illegal miner situation has reared its ugly head at Klipwal once again over the past few weeks after the problem seemed to have been solved. Lloyd detained two of the miners about a month ago and they were taken into police custody, given a court date, and have since been released on bail. Since then, a lock has been installed at the 6 level adit with a 24-hour security guard post as well. Nobody has been in or out after hours with that lock in place.

The only other known opening for the mine is on the opposite north side, where a ventilation shaft rises up next to the soccer field. There is a small manhole-like opening there covered with an iron cover. Below this cover drops a vertical shaft about 2 meters in diameter and down to 4 level over 100 meters below. I’ve seen the ladders in this north shaft, and they are very poorly connected to heavily corroded iron cross-beams. It’s an extremely dangerous place for people to go which is why nobody is allowed to go down North shaft.
Over the past few weeks, the security guards have reported seeing people going in and out of north shaft at various times during the night. A few attempted stake-outs by Lloyd and others at the mine have been fruitless, but on Saturday night, just I sat down to watch a movie at Nick’s house, he got a call from the security captain, Elvis. They had caught two miners as they were exiting the shaft, and had them detained. Just like last time, Nick called the Pongola police station and a car was sent to the mine right away. This time I went down to North shaft to see what was up.

When I arrived, the two illegal miners were handcuffed by the police who had just arrived. A lot of my co-workers were there, looking down the hole at Thys who went down to recover the miners’ tools. Eventually he emerged from the opening, struggling with the weight of the bags on his back. They were makeshift backpacks made from those plastic woven bags you get at places like Ikea. One bag, about the size of a standard backpacking backpack, was completely filled to the brim with rocks. The sheer weight was remarkable; just how these people carry these bags on these unstable ladders is beyond comprehension. The rocks themselves were mostly quartz that they were breaking off from the main mineralised zone. Along with the rocks they carried lamps, extra batteries, water bottles, food, and hammer and chisels.

It was another sad reminder of the ugly side of the gold mining business. Powered by corrupt businessmen trading this illegally-produced gold, these hapless illegal miners work through the night, sometimes staying underground for days at a time under the most difficult conditions with no safety equipment. And after milling the rock down and treating it with Mercury, they sell the product on for a fraction of its true price. When the police asked if there were more people down there, they said there were at least three more. Lloyd is due to arrive on Monday, and I know exactly what he’ll be doing when he gets here: going underground to look for them.

Back to Pilgrims Rest

This week I was assigned another transportation job to our sister mine TGME in Pilgrims Rest. Instead of transporting a ton of Carbon, this time I was driving up 5 drums of Potassium Cyanide. The cyanide is used in the treatment process to activate the gold and help it stick to the carbon in a during Carbon-in-leach processing. It is added to a mix of gold concentrate and carbon in large tanks, and must be done with close control of the pH and density of this mixture. If the pH is too acidic in the mixture and the cyanide is added, it creates cyanide gas, which can really ruin your day. Thankfully the cyanide I was transporting was locked up in a plastic bag which is in turn placed inside of a sealed drum, but I felt a bit like a bond villain or something driving around 5 drums with big pictures of the skull and cross bones printed on the sides.

Unlike last week, I also did not have Vincent as a second driver to share the journey with. It was my first solo adventure out on the road! Fortunately the load was a lot lighter this time and my truck more powerful, so it cut about 2 hours off of the driving time. I also took a different route, this time turning left after passing through Amsterdam and driving to Pilgrims Rest via Carolina, Machadodorp, and Lydenburg. Driving with a map and the road signs as my navigators, I only hit a small hitch between Machadodorp and Lydenburg. Lydenburg was well sign posted until I was about 40 km away, when the signs only pointed to a new town called Mashishing. I pulled over and couldn't find Mashishing anywhere on my map. I was sure I hadn't taken a wrong turn anywhere, and then it finally hit me. South Africa's government has been implementing a campaign to change many city names back to the original local tribal names they previously were known by before white European settlement. It's a nice idea in terms of cultural rehabilitation purposes, but it definitely can cause some confusion. Lydenburg had been changed to Mashishing.

With that figured out, I continued on, eventually climbing the mountain road and reaching the summit of the pass just West of Pilgrims Rest, which tops out at 5, 700 feet elevation and offers spectacular views across the imposing terrain of the eastern gold fields. The road then drops sharply down into the valley where the small town of Pilgrims Rest is accompanied by a sprawling township, a 9 hole golf course, and the mine. Arriving at the mine around 6:30, I dropped of the cyanide and drove back into town just as the sun was setting behind Mt. Sheba in the distance.

This time I was put up in the Royal Hotel in the old town, complete with a buffet dinner and breakfast. I did what everyone does at buffets, ate way too much food, and then ventured in to the adjacent bar owned by the hotel. That's when I ran into about 50 Swedish tourists, all in their 50's or 60's, who came in a tour bus that evening. With the bar mobbed, I walked down the road to Johnny's Pub where I had visited the week before and found some familiar faces. I got to talking to Henko, the guy who ran the golf course in town, and he begged me to come play sometime. Unfortunately I was working the next day.

The next morning I stuffed myself with bacon, eggs, and hash browns before driving back to the mine to take more samples of the tailings dam. The job was finished by 10 with the help of five guys with shovels and wheelbarrows, so I left much earlier than planned and headed straight to the golf course.

When I arrived, I was met by the typical "parking attendants" found in most parking lots in this country who watch your car in return for 5 or 10 rand. I entered the small clubhouse there where Henko sat filling out some paperwork. Except for him, the bartender, and a few greens keepers, the place was completely deserted. I was assigned a caddy named Oba and given a set of rental clubs and proceeded to go out and fire a spectacularly mediocre 45. It was nice to know I still have my swing after not playing for two months though.

I eventually drove back to Klipwal and arrived at 6 pm. A storm was already brewing on the way home, and just as it got dark, the power went out. I spent the evening sitting under the dim glow of my Lego man lantern reading Lord of the Rings with the lightning flashing relentlessly outside.

Quick Update

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. Excuse: We've all been working overtime the past two days and I'm exhausted. Here's what's happened since I got back from my road trip last Friday:

• Saturday - Slept and did absolutely nothing. It was great. At night there was a big party/braai not for Halloween but for the Durban Sharks winning the Currie Cup Final. I knew you'd be excited to hear that.
• Sunday - Began moving into my new house.
• Monday - Finished moving into my new house with the bare essentials: A bed, a refrigerator, and a clothes cupboard. Lloyd arrived at noon with his son Cameron, who brought his friend David. David and Cameron are the big ice hockey players, and David is actually visiting from Michigan and is trying to qualify to play for the South African National Ice Hockey Team. I guess it's a bit easier to crack than the US or Canadian squad. That afternoon Lloyd, David, Petrus, and I ventured down to 12 level, the deepest I have been in the mine so far at just over 400 m below the surface. It's also impossible to get any deeper at the moment because 12-15 levels are currently flooded with water. We went down to check the water level and see if another pump would be needed. Climbing up the ladders from 12 to 6 level (220 meters vertical) is a pretty good workout. That night we braaied. Lamb chops taste best over a flame!
• Tuesday - Monday night was my first night sleeping in the new house. I learned that there are many more bugs in this house, and the mosquitoes tormented me all night. Eventually I got up at 3:30 am and followed the Giants winning the World Series online. I went into the office at 5 am. My objective for the day was finishing the rough draft of a report for Lloyd and putting samples over the James Table. I finished this by 11 and Lloyd and I went over the report. Then he took me out to take more samples and I ended up working until 5 pm. It's been a long day, but the overtime pay will be nice.
• Tomorrow - Finish the report and then I'm back to TGME in Pilgrim's Rest for some more sampling!
• Almost forgot, I shot a few rounds of Lloyd's 9mm pistol at the tailings dam today. It was actually very frightening to feel how much power there was in such a small hand gun. I think I'll stick to the air rifle shooting pellets from now on.

The Journey North

Of the many interesting experiences I’ve had here at Klipwal, I can now add being a truck driver to the list. The mine staff here have been running at full speed to try to build a new plant before Thursday. That’s when yet another potential investor is arriving in Klipwal – in a helicopter – to listen to Lloyd brag and boast about his ‘baby’ (the mine). It’s just speculation on my part, but I’m thinking the guy arriving on Thursday might have even more cash to offer than the other guys judging by his preferred mode of transport. As a result of the flurry of activity at the mine, and with Nick off in Johannesburg buying steel, timber and cable in bulk, I was drafted to be a co-driver for a delivery of carbon to our sister mine TGME (Lloyd owns other mines too) located in Pilgrim’s Rest. I quickly packed an overnight bag on Thursday morning and was teamed up with one of our drivers named Vincent for the 6 hour drive north.

Our first pit stop was only five minutes outside of Klipwal at Vincent’s house. His house was typical of the rural dwellings that dot the countryside around Klipwal, consisting of six or seven small houses and huts clustered around a larger central house. Some were made of concrete and others of mud and stone. He said he grew up in that house and when we dropped by so he could pack his bag, there were three small children playing in the grass next to the two cows that his family owned. Vincent emerged about five minutes later and had changed out of his work overalls into plaid trousers, a Liverpool FC jersey, and a black leather jacket. Ten minutes down the road there was a large market going on with people selling fruit, clothes, and toiletries by the side of the road. Vincent pointed out his mother to me who was sitting selling Avocados and oranges in the market.

After passing through Piet Retief and continuing North, the next major town that we pass is Amsterdam. One of the many towns in South Africa named after a Dutch city, Amsterdam is in no way comparable to its European namesake. The main cross-roads at Amsterdam feature a Shell station, a liquor store, and a mechanics garage. Other than that, some old houses and a few more liquor stores line the main road through the town. It did however offer one thing that Amsterdam, Holland definitely does not have: monkeys. And we would end up passing a lot of monkeys over the next few hundred kilometres. They always seemed to be playing on the roads and evade oncoming traffic just in time before getting hit.

Unfortunately Vincent and I were not like the monkeys when it came to avoiding the Mpumalanga Traffic Police. Over 200 kilometres, Vincent and I ran into 5 traffic stops, which are annoyingly popular in South Africa. The police stand in the middle of the road, wave you to pull over, and then check for your license and if your vehicle is running properly. The first one we hit, they checked Vincent’s license and sent us on our way. The second one, however, resulted in a ticket for an “improperly fastened battery”. And at the fourth stop when they asked for our little reflective triangle thingy and when we couldn’t produce one, they slapped us with another 200-rand ticket. This all seemed very petty and proved to be an enormous waste of time, as we were now behind schedule, but we continued on until we stopped at a gas station in Badplass to switch drivers.

Taking the wheel of the Toyota Hiace, I revved it up to 2^nd gear and roared up the hill at 35 miles per hour. We were carrying nearly a ton of carbon on the back of this small flat bed truck (made to carry 1 ton), so it was very sluggish going up the hills. And up the hills we went until reaching the pass before entering the Barberton gold valley. After dropping down into the large bowl we slowly climbed our way back up to the next pass just south of Nelspruit. Home to the World Cup stadium held up by giraffes, Nelspruit was luckily not full of traffic as it usually is, and we breezed through the town and began the climb into the Transvaal hills. We were entering yet another South African gold country, the eastern Transvaal being home to Pilgrim’s Rest, a classic 1800’s mining town where I first started this whole journey almost two months ago. After finally reaching the sleepy tourist destination at around 4, I took the dirt access road into the valley to the mine there, where a guy named Danny was waiting for the carbon. Expecting another struggle to lift the two 500kg bags of carbon off the truck, I was relieved to see the crane they hired at their plant make quick work of the unloading process. Danny gave me the hotel reservations for the night, and I drove Vincent back to the town for some dinner and drinks.

I went back to Johnny’s Pub where Lloyd and I had a few drinks and talked with some locals back in September. I had a beer, and Vincent stuck with Sprite. The same guy was working behind the bar so I reintroduced myself and we got to talking about South Africa and how I was liking the country. Then he pointed to the flyer on the bar counter: “Thursday, October 28^th, Movie Night at Johnny’s Pub.” The movie was Tombstone, and it came with a two course meal of cornbread and homemade chilli. Perfect. By 6:30 it seemed like at least half the town of Pilgrim’s Rest (pop. 90) descended on Johnny’s, and just like last time they were all extremely friendly and excited to hear about their gold mine starting up again. They started the movie at 7 and I enjoyed the chilli con carne as we watched Wyatt Earp lay down the law in the Wild West. We finally left at around 10 and Vincent drove me up the hill to the Crystal Springs Lodge where Danny had booked us in for the night.

Breakfast was included in our stay there so I took full advantage of that by raiding the cereal and muffins at the continental buffet. That morning we headed back down the steep road overlooking Pilgrim’s Rest to the valley floor and down the dirt road to the mine. It was now my job to sample the tailings dam here, just as I have done at Klipwal, and take that material back to our mine to run in over the James Table. Lloyd arrived later that morning and then assigned me the task of drafting a report outlining the processing potential of the dam there, so I will be busy completing that in time for Mr. Helicopter Bigbucks on Thursday. Soon I finished sampling and Vincent and I were on our way, heading south the way we came.

The drive back was uneventful but beautiful, with amazing views from the summits of the passes looking over miles of the jagged Drakensburg Mountains and the sweeping plains below. Everything was fine until we hit the gauntlet of police traffic stops again. This time I was the driver. They first checked my California driver’s license and while they were a bit confused and then excited, everything checked out. Then they began meticulously checking the truck, asking me to turn the hazard lights on and adjust the mirrors. I felt like I was back at the DMV taking my driving test. When I pressed down on the horn and it didn’t work, we ran into some problems. They also noticed that on one of the tires, one of the nuts was missing. He was ready to ask me to step out of the car and write me a ticket, when I quickly grabbed the two we were given the previous day and showed him. He obviously felt some pity, because he then asked me the question “Can I write you another ticket?” Not really knowing how to respond to being asked this by a cop, I replied after a long pause, “Umm....no, thank you?” And guess what, it worked! First time I’ve talked myself out of ticket.

It was six in the evening when we arrived in Piet Retief for a final fill-up. And as icing on the cake of our wonderful two-day journey, we were given a spectacle at the gas station when a crazy drunk guy stripped down naked and started running around the parking lot. The workers helplessly chased him around until the police showed up (carrying large shot guns), which was our cue to leave. I drove back the hour to Klipwal and dropped Vincent off at his house before collapsing into bed. Truck driving takes a lot out of you.

Stuck in the Mud

I was given the keys to one of the pick-up trucks this morning along with a team of four to help me re-sample the tailings dams at Klipwal. A couple of weeks ago, Lloyd arranged for me to do the exact same thing (http://macsledger.blogspot.com/2010/10/fools-gold.html), so the holes were already dug and I knew exactly how to go about it. I planned for the sampling to be done around 10 after starting digging at 7, and then I could have all of the material over the James table and the pyrite concentrate into the sample bags ready to go by about noon or 1 at the latest. Sometimes, of course, "kuk" happens. There's a new Afrikaans word for you to enjoy.

To recap from a previous post, I was sampling 3 tailings dams, which are basically large piles of fine waste material from the ore that is brought up from underground. Through previous sampling they have established that there is still a fair amount of gold in these tailings, mostly locked up in pyrite crystals. So today I would take a total of 400 kg of tailings material from the three dams and then run this material over the James table to separate out the pyrite into a concentrate that will hopefully be running at up to 80 grams/ton gold. This is economic because of the sheer volume of material in these tailings dams, and it's so easy to get to. Say for instance, that the three tailings dams here contain a combined total of 2 million tons of material, which is not far off the actual amount. When this material is run over the James table, it produces a pyrite concentrate that weighs about 1.2% (conservative estimate) of what you put in. So that gives you 24,000 tons of pyrite concentrate, which will average anywhere from 15-80 g/ton gold. That is what the sampling I am doing will give us an indication of, the grade of the pyrite concentrate. And if we do get up into the 80 g/ton gold range, with gold going at over 43 dollars per gram right now, that can generate some serious money. (WARNING: MATH) For instance, taking the most conservative possible estimate: a 1,000,000 ton dam, with a 1% mass pull, running at 15 grams/ton gold, will produce a revenue of....$6,450,000. Or, for the optimists, 2,000,000 tons of tailings, with a 1.5% mass pull running at 80 g/t will give you...$103,200,000 (!). Obviously the result will be somewhere in the middle, and that is what my sampling will help find out.

So all was normal as Leonard, Phillimon, and I along with two others systematically filled up buckets with the mud and then filled 3 large bags, one for each dam, with the tailings material. Johan, our electrician, was working on some powerlines adjacent to the dams, and was using the pick-up truck as well. With the three full bags ready and waiting at various areas across the dam, I borrowed the truck and drove to the first bag. I backed up to meet the first bag which contained 200kg or 440lbs of the muddy "waste". I had six people on my team now and with me as the seventh, it took all of our strength to lift up the awkward, floppy sample bag into the back of the truck. With that one loaded, they got in the back along with the bag and I pulled away towards the next bag about 100 meters away.

20 meters later, I was sinking. A put my foot down, and experienced that horrible feeling of having your foot on the gas pedal, hearing the wheels spinning ferociously, and the car going absolutely nowhere. I turned off the truck, had everybody get out, and I found a couple of pieces of wood to wedge under the tires of the rear-wheel drive truck. All six of them pushed as I slammed on the gas and tried to get us out of the situation, but after about 5 tries, I needed to explore other options.

I called Thys, Klipwal's mechanic, taxi driver, and all-around vehicle guy. Five minutes later he was hooking up the back of the truck to the old Land Rover that he arrived in. The seven of braced to push the truck, Thys hit the gas on the Rover, and...nothing. In fact there was some movement, unfortunately it was the Land Rover now sinking down into the mud. Now we had two vehicles swallowed by the viscous, soupy clay. Thys cursed a bit in English and Afrikaans and then hopped into the original pick-up that I got stuck. He instructed us to push, and we all followed his order even though both he and I knew I had tried the same thing unsuccessfully 20 minutes prior. Thys rammed down the accelerator, we pushed, and to my surprise the truck lurched forward! That's experience for you. We continued to push as it awkwardly skidded through about 20 meters of mud before hitting a dry patch where he could rest.

What happened next is the reason why I will now carry a camera with me whenever I am at work. I am extremely annoyed I didn't have it with me for this moment. Thys navigated his way to the extreme Southern corner of the tailings damn that we were on, reversing to the very edge. He now had the second bag of material that we loaded onto the back, adding an extra 100 kilos to the weight of the truck. In front of him was 50 meters of dry dirt followed by about 80 meters of mud before he was safe again on the dry north side of the dam. A couple of loud revs of the engine echoed towards us, then, straight out of Back to the Future, Thys gunned it to 88 and screamed through the gauntlet of mud. The truck fish-tailed around a bit but glided beautifully along until finishing safe and sound on the other side. It's unfortunate that today was sunny and stormless; a well-timed bolt of lightning and Thys would have undoubtedly travelled through time.

Attention now turned to the stuck Land Rover. We first relieved the pick-up of the heavy sample bags before Thys drove into position to tow the Rover with the pick-up. I couldn''t help but think of the ridiculousness of the situation. A 10:30 am, the Rover was towing the pick-up. At 10:45, the pick-up was towing the rover. This proved to be even more ineffective, the two-wheel drive pick-up having no chance. And even with us wedging rocks underneath the Rover's tires and Thys gunning the Rover as I tried to tow it with the truck, the Rover just sunk even more. The chassis was on the brink of sinking into the mud, so we had to stop.

I got my team to help me load the three sample bags back into the pick-up, and we drove back to the plant to drop them off, having no choice to abandon the Rover for the time being. After unloading the samples next to the James table and then waiting in the office for about thirty minutes, the Rover's savior arrived in the form of Lloyd's old Land Cruiser. Pietrus had taken it into Piet Retief on business and now we could use the beast to get the Land Rover out of the mud. I went down with Pietrus and Thys in the Cruiser, we hooked it up to the Rover, and Pietrus stepped on the gas. The front of the Cruiser lurched upwards, and then after a couple of seconds, the Rover popped out of it's muddy trenches and rolled forward into the harder dirt.

Thus ended a normal work day at Klipwal. For the record, I am in no way affiliated with Toyota or the Land Cruiser model, but that thing saved the day!

Africa has the best thunderstorms

Saturday turned out to be a fairly typical one of driving to Piet Retief for shopping and coming back and relaxing at Klipwal in the afternoon. That was until another afternoon thunderstorm hit. And this one just didn't want to go away.

At about 4 I was getting a little antsy after reading on the patio in front of my house so I went on a little run. I started down the dirt road towards the 6 level entrance and figured I'd run about 15 minutes downhill and it would take a half an hour or so to run back up. Only 5 minutes into the run though, I had just passed a donkey when I saw an impressive flash of lightning almost directly above me. It seemed to have moved horizontally across the sky, and there was no rain yet to accompany it. Still, that was plenty of a warning for me to immediately turn around and hot-foot it back to the house. I arrived about 10 minutes later, unlocked the door, went inside, and sure enough, there was a boom of thunder followed by heavy rain. Impeccable timing.

Fortunately this storm lasted only about half an hour, and soon it was dry outside again. My neighbor Nick invited me over for a braai so I walked over around 6 and we started a log fire. By 6:15, I was sitting on his patio, looking south over the Pongola River and the rugged terrain of the Ithala game reserve, experiencing without a doubt the most amazing lightning storm I have ever seen. The actual storm at this point was at least 10 or 15 miles away, but the frequency and brightness of the lightning was nothing like anything I've ever seen. Far away on the horizon, jagged bolts tore down from the grey clouds and momentarily lit up the skyline as if it were midday. Sometimes there would be sheet lightning that illuminated the sky for miles on either side of where we were sitting. The visual spectacle was enhanced by the light from the flashes reflecting of the rushing river some 400 meters below. Some of the bolts that struck were so bright that they left that temporarily blinding imprint in your eye, like somebody just shined a flashlight in your face. And this storm was still miles away. The thunder we heard was just a dull, distant roar.

Around 6:45 the charcoal was ready so we put the meat over the BBQ, and still sat watching the distant storm. I realised however, that it definitely was getting a little bit closer. The thunder was definitely louder, with less of a delay from the initial lightning strikes, and the crickets had silenced themselves. Nick was explaining to me earlier, when I was a bit nervous about starting a braai with a lightning storm nearby, that if the crickets are chirping, which they were very loudly and incessantly at the time, it means that there is no rain coming and it should stay dry. With the meat now over the burning embers, we both noticed that the crickets had gone silent. A gust of wind blew very hard, kicking up dust and the smoke from the fire, and before we knew it, some loud, sharp banging noises started to come from behind his house. Confused about what the noise was, I stood in the doorway with my camera, while Nick rushed to take the meat of the braai.

Not 30 seconds later, Nick was safely inside with meat (perfectly cooked), and I figured out what the banging noises were. Those were the hailstones from the front of the storm hitting the metal roof. It had arrived. I soon witnessed another first: the biggest hailstones I've ever scene. Most were easily the size of golf balls and exploded into pieces as the hit the concrete on the patio. After about two minutes of the icy stuff, I was thrown off guard by a lightning strike, this time the kind that is so close it makes a much louder, sharper cracking sound than the normal low thunderous boom. And after that followed what is probably the heaviest rain I have ever witnessed.

An hour earlier, Nick and I stood out on the patio enamoured with the show taking place miles away, with a new lightning strike literally every one to three seconds. Now that was happening right above our heads. There was another close strike and immediately the power went out. Nick got a flashlight and went to the circuit breaker and saw that they had tripped, so we soon were up and running again. I finished my dinner and waited for a small lull in the heavy rain, and ran back the 40 yards to my house at around 8. And the storm rolled on, without seeming to move from Klipwal.

I desperately tried to take photos showing the impressive blasts of lightning, but couldn't even manage to capture one even though the strikes seemed virtually constant and coming from all directions. I ended up getting a few videos captured, and have some serious respect for anyone who has caught lightning on film. Maybe I'm just a crap photographer.

Then, at around 10 o'clock, it happened. Sitting on the couch in my house, I was shaken by the loudest noise I ever heard. An enormous blast of a whip-crack sound exploded into my eardrums, and I thought a tree had fallen on to my roof. It was another lightning strike, and I don't know for sure but it either hit my roof or a tree right next to the house. The blinding flash that accompanied the noise was immediately followed by complete darkness. And then another flash about 4 seconds later. And another, and another. The power was out again, and this time for a lot longer.

I'm glad I like thunderstorms, and I'm glad that my internet here is on cell phone reception, because I just stayed up, accompanied by my flashlight, candle, and Lego man lantern, and talked to some friends online. The constant lightning flashes and the heavy rain lasted a good 5 hours, as the storm finally petered out around 1 in the morning. The next morning the power came on around 8 am, and I learned that there were dozens of transformers in the area that failed, so the surrounding villages for about 40 miles were all without power too. As I type this account on Sunday evening at 5, I can just begin to hear distant rumbles of thunder (which always reminds me of Jurassic Park when they hear the footsteps of the T-rex). Can't wait to see what happens tonight!

Technical Difficulties

In the sense of the mine, not my blog. Klipwal is experiencing some growing pains at the moment which has led to a slightly unusual last couple of days for me. It all started sometime Monday evening when the pump at 7-level seized up because of the lime deposits building up over months of use. This pump takes our natural drinking water source, a fissure about 200 meters below ground, and pumps it up to the surface where it is stored in tanks and distributed amongst the offices and houses. On Tuesday morning, they noticed that the tanks were low so they ordered a new pump that would be delivered and installed the next day.

I was planning on doing my usual underground mapping on Wednesday, but when I got to the truck at 6:10 in the morning, Thys asked if I could help install the new pump, so I took Phillimon and Leonard with me and we went down to 6 level with the pump and a group of other workers. Luckily the rails on 6 level had recently been refurbished so they could place the new pump on a mine cart, or cocopan as they call it here, and wheel it to the ladders down to 7 level. After that, the process got trickier. The pump is extremely heavy, and takes at least 4 if not 6 people to carry it, so lowering it down on the ladders took extreme care. The workers rigged up a rope system and slowly lowered it down the 40 meters to 7 level while I went ahead with Thys down a different set of ladders to get to the old pump and start dismantling it.

The pumping site sits in the far northern nook of 7 level and there is a single fluorescent light creating an eerie glow over the area. The old pump was rigged up on a steel frame and each bolt was painstakingly taken out by Thys and I before the group of us managed to detach the pump from the frame and move it to the side. Eventually the new pump arrived, which was identical to the old one minus the rust and lime deposits. The process was reversed and we bolted the new pump into place, installed new engine belts and eventually tested it out. The pump seemed to hum along nicely and the reservoir of water that had built up behind the adjacent dam was slowly beginning to drain. It was a tedious process that lasted a good 6 hours of hard work underground, and it gave me a good taste of what a mining engineer has to do on a daily basis. I definitely prefer mapping.

Now it was just a matter of the water tanks at the surface refilling so we could have running water again, which we had been without for almost 24 hours. I waited and waited Wednesday night, and no running water came. Thursday morning, same story. Turns out the workers in the plant had inadvertently started using the water from the drinking water tank for the plant processes, which has left us still with no running water. So today I helped the crew at the plant carry pipes and cut pipes and switch on pumps and switch off pumps, hopefully in some way helping the problem. Eventually everything was put in its right place again and the water was filling up the tanks, but we now must wait again for the tank to fill up. As I'm typing up this post at 3 in the afternoon, I'll just check the tap one more time...yep, as I expected, still no water. Fortunately I have a stockpile of full, chilled water bottles in the fridge and some juice to go with that, but it's definitely getting to that point where I could really use a shower.

Our Chief

It is with great regret that I announce the passing of Chief Msibi, who locally governed the immediate area including our property at the mine. I of course knew very little about the local Chief, but two of my co-workers had close family relations with him so the past couple days at work have been more somber than usual. When I was driving back from town yesterday, my truck reached the summit of a small hill in the dirt road to reveal a parade of hundreds of local Zulus marching along the road in remembrance of Chief Msibi. I pulled off to the side of the road and witnessed the crowd slowly pass, some holding hands, others looking down at the dirt. It was quite moving to see the entire community together there respecting their dear Chief who I'm told has ruled this land for over 20 years.

It will be interesting to see in the near future what sort of ceremonies there will be for the funeral. Funerals are enormously important to the Zulu community here. In the small town of Piet Retief alone I've counted three funeral homes. For someone so well-respected, I expect there will be an extraordinary ceremony put together for the Chief. And from the brief accounts I have been given from one of his family members, he definitely deserves it. R.I.P. Chief Msibi.

Rugby and the Beach

Now that I’m fully capable of driving with a manual transmission, I have the freedom to go into town and on various other adventures out of Klipwal as I please. I took advantage of that this weekend first by driving into town for my weekly grocery shopping. With the recent storms and rainfall we have had here the past week, the heavily pot-holed route out to Piet Retief has become considerably worse. With many of the potholes noticeably wider and deeper, the drive to town took an extra 10 or 15 minutes on top of the usual hour it requires. Once I arrived I did my shopping, sent off some letters from the post office, and went to the hardware store to get some yellow spray paint which I so desperately could have done with for mapping underground this past week.

Saturday afternoons this time of year are dominated by Currie Cup Rugby, and this Saturday was the semi-finals of the playoffs. It coincides nicely with the Major League Baseball playoffs, so I’ll use that as an analogy to attempt to give you some sort of an emotional attachment to the rugby playoffs here. If you aren’t a fan of baseball or rugby, I’m sorry. You can skip the next few paragraphs. The first matchup was between the Blue Bulls of Pretoria, the perennial powerhouse with a huge fan base and lots of money to buy good players. Their fans are arrogant and often crass (they’re the ones with the giant blue testicles hanging off the back of their trucks), and no season is a success unless they win the title. They are the New York Yankees. Saturday afternoon’s semi-final pitted the Blue Bulls against the Durban Sharks, an up and coming surprise package that easily took first place in the regular season standings this year. They have very little playoff experience but they had home field advantage and all the talent to get a victory. The Sharks are much like the Texas Rangers.

I walked the five minutes over to Jaco’s house to watch the game. He is a Blue Bulls fan and his wife Ann-Marie is a Sharks supporter, so things were already tense when I arrived. To make matters worse, the game was delayed 30 minutes because of a swarm of bees on the pitch. I kid you not. Finally the match started and the Sharks stunned the Blue Bulls with a try in the opening three minutes. The rest of the match was hard fought but yielded little scoring opportunities as the rain came pouring down in the second half. The Durban Ranger Sharks of Texas eventually prevailed 16-12 over the New York Blue Bull Yanks of Pretoria.

The next semi-final match-up immediately followed and pitted Western Province (from Cape Town) against the Free State Cheetahs. Western Province haven’t been to the final since 2001 and sported an experienced side anchored by national hero and super-quick winger Brian Habana. They are a traditional team with a storied history and play in Cape Town, a picturesque coastal city by the bay. Sounds a bit like the San Francisco Giants to me. The Free State Cheetahs have Orange and white jerseys, play their home games in Bloemfontein, and have a carnivorous mammal as their mascot. Just like the Philadelphia Phillies! Western Province ended up cruising in this semi-final, easily handling the Phillies – I mean the Cheetahs – 31-7. So my bold prediction based on South African rugby results is: There will be a Texas Rangers – SF Giants World Series. You heard it here first.

Enough of the sports then (I like sports), what else happened this weekend? Well I can now knock off another Ocean from my list, because today I drove out east with Nick to St. Lucia and dipped my feet in the Indian Ocean. Considerably warmer than the North Sea, the Indian Ocean was pleasant to wade in but the brownness of the water was slightly ugly to look at. The turbidity of the ocean was no doubt due to the recent storms that have churned up the waters in the area, but we managed to pick a beautiful day to go to the beach. I took the opportunity to do a little sun bathing and go for a nice run along what was a very picturesque beach with soft sand grading into rolling grassy dunes as you went inland. Reading one of the signs, I learned that the sand there was apparently highly enriched in Titanium, which you could see in the form of irregular black streaks of fine sand within the coarser beige material. It was amusing for a geologist. There were also hundreds of little crabs running around (or crab-walking around), but I could annoyingly never get close enough to one for a picture because they would just disappear in one of the thousands of little crab holes dotting the beach.

After the nice time at the beach which reminded me so dearly of West Sands in the auld grey toon, we returned to the tourist village of St. Lucia and I had an awesome seafood platter for lunch that included some Mozambique prawns and an ice cold beer to drink, which I have to say went down like a homesick mole. That’s one of Nick’s sayings and I hear it about five times per day so I had to include it at some point. After that it was back in the truck and Nick drove back the three and a half hours to Klipwal.

Tomorrow I will experience my first full shift underground. The underground shifts here have recently changed, and because there is only one morning shuttle in the Unimog down to the 6-level entrance, I now start work at 6 am (YAY!!!) and I’ll be underground mapping from 7 until 2. Until now I have only been underground about 4 hours at a time at most, so it will be interesting to see whether I enjoy working in the dark for that long a time!

Creepy Crawlies

I have been fine with all the spiders living in my house, but a scorpion hanging out on the curtains above my bed was not something I wanted to see!

Fool's Gold

Lloyd arrived last night and this morning we went out to the tailings dams to do some sampling. The tailings dams are made up of the waste material that is left after the rock we dig up out of the ground is put through the extraction process. The nice thing about our tailings dams is that they actually still have a decent amount of gold in them. So Lloyd had me organise a group of six guys to sample the 3 main tailings dams at the mine. These are fairly large, trapezoidal piles of stratified mud that sit in a small valley on the side of the mountain that the mine is on. The biggest one is about 25 meters high, 60 wide, and 150 long. The smallest one is a quarter of that size.

In the misty, damp drizzle that has now descended on Klipwal just two days after it was 100 degrees here, my team and I sampled a total of 500 kg or about 1,100 pounds of this mud from all across the three tailings dams. It was a great workout carrying buckets full of 20 kg of clay over hundreds of yards, and an extreme test in balance when trying to carry the buckets down the steep slopes of the highest dam.

After the material was loaded into the truck, I drove back to the plant, where it was poured over a James table. A James table is a large sloped table with a constant flow of water over it that separates the gold and heavy metals from the rest of the material. There are parallel ridges and and troughs and the gold is separated out with the help of the vibrating table and gravity. I guess you could just look it up on wikipedia, but in simpler terms, it's basically a high-tech version of panning for gold.

Today, however, we were panning for pyrite. That's right, fools gold! We aren't foolish, of course (I hope), because the majority of the gold in these samples is actually invisible gold, which is locked up inside the pyrite crystals. Lloyd has the technology to get this gold out of the pyrite, hence we will now be taking apart the tailings dams piece by piece and extracting all of the pyrite from it.

One fun part of today was working with my team of local Zulus, which gave me an opportunity to learn more of the language with Philemon and Leonard there acting as interpreters. "laba" means "here" and "nalaba" means "there". I used those words quite often today. Later this afternoon I was back in the office with Leonard and Philemon when Patience, our receptionist came in and began talking to them in Zulu. Leonard started laughing and so did Patience, but Philemon look uninterested. When I asked them what they were laughing about, Philemon came out with a cracker of a line:

"You know all the women, they are always opening their mouths and saying too many things which I do not wish to hear."

That made me laugh. I'm definitely getting to know my co-workers over the past few weeks.

To close on a completely unrelated note, I noticed for the first time today that there is a page I can view which has comprehensive statistics for the people looking at this blog. No personal information is given obviously, but it shows where the hits are coming from, and according to the stats page, I got 11 hits from Japan and 9 from South Korea yesterday. I guess I'm on my way to Asian internet super-stardom.

Gone Fishing

Today after work I went with Hans and Nick to a nearby reservoir for some bass fishing. I haven't been fishing in I would say at least 6 years, and my fish-catching record is poor (at best), so I went in to the fishing expedition with low expectations. My first cast was pretty impressive. The line caught in the reel and the bait flew majestically about 3 feet forward before tangling in a bush. Take two. Unfortunately it ended in a similar result.

Eventually after 5 or 6 tries I relearned the art of casting and I was getting the bait out a good 40 or 50 feet into the water. Soon I even had a nibble! Just as I was getting confident, I reeled in my faux millipede I was using as bait only to find that a large collection of underwater foliage had collected on my hook. I quickly tore off the unwanted plants and re-cast. This was a good one, it sailed further than any of my previous throws. Soon I felt a firm tug on the line and I knew I was getting a bite. The reel started letting some line out so I held firm and quickly pulled the line back in. 5 minutes later I was immersed in the biggest fishing battle of my life, this thing must have been huge because it wouldn't budge out of the water. Finally with one last pull the lure emerged from the lake, bearing the full weight of the magnificent beauty pictured below.

That's right, it was just a big bunch of seaweedy crap. Nay fish. In the end, Hans caught three fish, Nick caught one, and I caught enough greenery to supply an elementary school salad bar. I still had a great time though, and got to enjoy another amazing South African sunset. Check it out:

We drove back home along the dirt road to Klipwal and on the way stopped at a local Zulu bar for some beer for the braai we were about to have. Hans kept one fish to eat for tomorrow evening, while tonight we had lamb on pork chops on the cards. So upon our return, we went to Nick's house, lit a large wooden fire, and began shooting drink cans with the air rifle. Eventually the lead pellets ran out and the meat was finished cooking, and that just about sums up my Monday evening.

A Sunday afternoon...

...spent shooting tangerines with an air rifle. It was pretty fun.

Also, on the drive back from Johanessburg to Klipwal, we passed through a town called Volksrust. Hanging on a fence next to the main intersection was an enormous sign advertising a 6 vs. 6 soccer tournament. I really wanted to enter a team, especially since the sign said that the 1st place team wins a sheep! What if they gave out livestock instead of plastic trophies at youth soccer tournaments? Just a thought.

A Manly Birthday

My 22nd birthday started out with something every guy needs to experience at some point in his life: A South African mining expo. My boss Nick picked me up from Lloyd's mansion and drove me over to the Nasrec exhibition center, which is adjacent to the Soccer City stadium used for the final of the world cup. That brought back good memories, except this time instead of thousands of crazy, colorful, international soccer fans there were thousands of crazy, Afrikaaner, international mining fans. If you like engineering marvels, tires the size of a house, 147 different types of steel cable, flash lights brighter than the sun, overzealous sales people, the shameless use of scantily-clad women to hand out brochures, and free beer, then this was your place.

Nick used to run a small engineering business for a while so he was enamoured with all of the space-age milling equipment and 85-micron processing screens (WOW!), and while a lot of it was cool to look at, I was a bit disappointed with the representation for the geology side of mining at the expo. But if you're shopping around Chinese mining cable dealers, let me know because I have a few good contacts for you.

After the big day of flexing the man muscle at the expo, Nick took me to the local watering hole for a drink with his brother and son, who is 18. The bar was an Irish pub called O'Hagans. Where isn't there an Irish pub!? I enjoyed the drink and got to talking about music and the local social scene in Pretoria and Joburg with Nick's son Jonathan while sipping on my Heineken, you know that famous Irish beer. Seems like everyone is definitely into their house music and the dreaded dub-step here. I'm sorry but if you don't know what dub-step is, please don't bother trying to find out.

Naturally, the next place to go to sustain my testosterone levels was an ice hockey match. Now, I know what you're thinking, ice hockey in South Africa? Funnily enough, Lloyd's entire family are huge ice hockey nuts. Lloyd plays, his daughter plays, his son has even been to Michigan trying to break into the semi-pro leagues there. Tonight was the first game in a round-robin tournament that featured Lloyd's team (he's the coach), led by who else but the coach's son, against a team from Johannesburg. I've been to some NHL games and I have to say, the quality of the play was pretty darn good. There were great goals and some biiiiiiiiig hits, which are always nice to see in a hockey game.

After Lloyd's Jaguars thumped the visiting Scorpions 6-1, we headed across the street to a Spur Steakranch for dinner. I find Spur hilarious, and here is why: Each Spur Steakranch is heavily themed with a Native American motif running throughout the place. Each restaurant is separately named after an old American tribe, like Navajo or Shashone. They take it to the extreme with different little Native American sayings and words of wisdom on all the place mats. And in true South African style, the portions are huge and if you don't want an enormous hunk of meat on your plate you might as well leave. Despite my begging, I was also treated to a classic themed-restaurant birthday song with a sparkler and a balloon. A lot of it was in Sesotho, one of the local dialects, so I couldn't understand it (to be honest I was half-expecting some sort of Native American chant that they forced their employees to learn), but it was a sufficiently rousing and embarrassing spectacle. I enjoyed my chicken quesadillas (ha found something on the menu that wasn't red meat, in your face Spur) and a pint of beer to cap of a very South African and very manly birthday celebration. If only I was back at the mine, I could go off-roading while shooting a crocodile with a shot-gun (JOKE!).

Lightning Storm

I'm currently relaxing in the comfort of Lloyd's luxurious home in Pretoria, experiencing the 'civilized' life for the first time in a month. Tomorrow I'll be visiting Genalysis, a geological laboratory service in Johannesburg, so I'll probably get to play with expensive lasers and things like that.

With the aid of faster internet, I have uploaded this video for your enjoyment of a nice little lightning strike I caught on camera the other night. It was taken from the doorstep of my house, looking east to the nearby hill that houses the mine's armoury on top of it. As we left Klipwal early this morning, a larger thunderstorm was brewing and we were hit with the first big rain of the season. News back from the mine is that all the power is out at the moment, so it looks like we left just in time!

Weekend Pics

Nick and a security guard walking towards the 6 level adit

The Land Rover parked near 6 level with a large pump in the background. The mine is currently flooded from 12 level down to 15 level, so a series of pumps are used to minimize the flooding and eventually reverse it.

Off-roading in the company car

Weekend Fun

I’m happy to report that I accomplished a lot more this weekend than I did the last; not being cooped up in bed with a fever certainly helped. I had a nice sleep-in on Saturday morning and after lunch went over to Jaco’s house to watch some rugby. Jaco is the main technician at the mine and is about 30 years old. He stays with his wife Ann Marie and their two pit bulls Spotty and Roxy. He invited me over for some Currie Cup rugby action, and I can’t say no to sports so I went.

The Currie Cup is the South African club rugby league and October is the last month, so matches are pretty tense these days. The Blue Bulls of Pretoria seem to be the Yankees or Manchester United of Currie Cup rugby, with rampant bandwagon supporters from all across the country. The trademark of the diehard Blue Bulls fans is to hang a massive pair of blue plastic testicles from the back of presumably your truck or car. I can’t tell you how many of these things I’ve seen on the main roads, lovely to follow behind. Many of the staff here support the Blue Bulls, with their main rivals these days being the Sharks from Durban and the Free State Cheetahs. Don’t root for Leopards, they suck this year.

I enjoyed watching the Blue Bulls narrowly beat Western Province with Jaco and Ann Marie, and soon realised that they had quite the satellite TV package. There are four separate channels dedicated to soccer here, and they even had the American ESPN! That got me pretty excited, but what really impressed was when Jaco showed me his custom sound system he has accumulated. Okay, I honestly am not a huge fan or aficionado of enormous stereo systems, but Jaco seemed excited to show me (he’s dedicated an entire room to it) so let him show me.

I soon realised, as my ears began to bleed from the ridiculous volume levels, that this was a great opportunity to get a taste of the Afrikaans music culture. So, taking from Jaco and bit of other music I’ve heard people listening to, it seems that they are very into their mash-up, rave-y, dance music here. 80’s music is big, classic rock, and country. And if you’re looking for a new pop sensation, look no further than Kurt Darren. YouTube him, he’s a stud. His song “Kaptein” is kind of like an Afrikaans youth anthem. While he was on the computer he also showed me pictures of his totalled truck from an accident they were in. Drunk driving is a pretty big problem in general in South Africa, and Jaco admitted that both he and his wife were drunk and that’s what caused the accident. It’s strange how nonchalantly drunk driving treated over here compared to the US or the UK.

After the afternoon of getting to know Jaco and Ann Marie, we headed across the road to Thys’ house for what else, an enormous braai. This time on the menu were t-bone steaks and of course, bourevors, the ubiquitous South African sausage. It was my first time in Thys’ house, which was filled with model cars that seemed to take up every horizontal surface in the place, as well as a big sound system (not quite as impressive as Jaco’s). Thys showed me his concertina accordions and played along to a few songs he had on CD, turns out he’s pretty good!

For the third night in a row I stuffed myself with red meat and potato salad. It’s incredible how much food they eat here, with the braai being the centrepiece of almost every evening gathering. Anyway, with a fully belly we talked around the fire for a few hours, mostly attempting to teach me more Afrikaans, before we all retired after the firewood ran out. Jaco, being the generous guy he is, offered for me to crash at his place. This turned out to be very fruitful, for Stanford football was playing Oregon on ESPN, which Jaco had on satellite. The game started at 2 am and I stayed up to watch the entire thing; unfortunately Stanford lost and I couldn’t find any of the family in the stands on TV. I walked home at 5:30 in the morning as the sun was rising, slightly disappointed by Stanford’s loss, but enjoying the peacefulness and stillness of early Sunday morning at Klipwal.

After a much needed sleep, I got a call from Nick in the early afternoon wondering if I wanted to take the old Land Rover out for a spin. I jumped all over this and we took it out first to the slimes dam, which is a large, dusty expanse of perfectly flat land made up of the waste material from the mine. I drove around for a while in circles there, getting used to the clutch and the handling of the big 4x4. Soon I was ready to take it down the steep hill to the 6 level entrance, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Not a bad way to learn how to drive a stick-shift. As I drove the Rover back up the hill to the house, a thunderstorm began which I am currently enjoying watching from my front porch as I type this up.

October Heat

Happy October! The month that usually ushers in the colder, windier weather that I’ve grown accustomed to in Scotland is of course a little bit different here in South Africa. With summer coming in a couple of months, today marked my first day at Klipwal of 100-degree weather. This is about the time the rains should be moving in as well, although they have had a very dry winter here and the talk seems to be that the rain won’t arrive until November this year. Apparently they get some pretty amazing thunderstorms in these parts so I’m very much looking forward to seeing those. So far there has only been a few dry lightning storms at night, which can be pretty dangerous with the windy, dry weather conditions here.

With the potential investors busy being shown around the plant this morning, I took some time in the survey office to organize some of their old maps before joining Lloyd and his gang in going to Kortnek. It has become quite a popular destination for me over the past couple weeks, and there is definitely something very intriguing to me about the wildness of the whole place. Riding in the way back of Lloyd’s packed Land Cruiser, I could read the temperature level as 42 for outside, about 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say it was a scorcher, and it’s only spring for them here. It was definitely taking its toll on the normally tireless artisanal miners at Kortnek. Most were sleeping under the shade of their makeshift camps or even at the entrance of the adit, as we found a few guys fast asleep as we poked our heads in.

One thing that caught my eye was an enormous dead lizard, and maybe somebody reading this can tell me what kind it is, but it was fairly startling seeing right on the path. It was about 3 feet long from head to tail and as you can see in the picture, it had a big piece of flesh missing from its body. Lloyd reckoned they probably whacked it with a shovel and were leaving it to dry a bit in the sun before cooking it for dinner. After they chatted for a while and we looked around at a lot of the holes being dug at the site, it was decided that the immediate area would need to be mapped to get the precise geometries of the ore bodies that they are mining there. That’s where I come in, so I’m sure I’ll continue my visits to Kortnek in the near future.

This weekend I’ll be driving the old Land Rover around the mine on Saturday and might pop into Piet Retief for some foodstuffs. Fishing down at the Pongola River is still on the list of things to do as well as getting out to the coast, seeing the animals at the nearby game reserve, and playing more soccer, but at the moment I’m happy relaxing in the shade. Meanwhile, I need to prepare for another evening of copious amounts of food and alcohol, as it’s the shareholders’ last evening on the mine before they drive out tomorrow and eventually fly back to Australia. Have a great weekend!

The big-wigs are in town

It has been a good week and a half since I've been underground, so it was almost nice to return to the deep dark depths of Klipwal Gold Mine today with my partners in crime Leonard and Phillimon. We went down to 7 level and I mapped a small portion of the main drive shaft. Changes have already been made with the happenings of last week with the illegal miners, which have taken shape as a security hut outside the 6 level entrance which is now manned by two security guards from 4pm to 8am. When we got back to surface today, Pietrus came down in the Unimog with a crew to install a lock on the big steel door to further secure the 6 level entrance.

When they eventually took us back up to the offices, I was pleasantly surprised to see Grant, a friend of Lloyd's and a mining geologist, waiting for me in the survey office. He proceeded to give me a crash course about just about everything I needed to know for underground mining, mapping, and sampling, which I desperately needed. I don't think I have ever learned so much in three or four hours. It's amazing how much help it was to actually hear from an economic geologist what the hell I should be doing when I'm underground and how I should be doing it.

This was a bit of a precursor to this evening's arrival of Lloyd and his potential investors from Australia. Tomorrow they will be shown around the mine and Kortnek and will be asking questions regarding the functionality and viability of the mine. Tonight, however, involved a massive braai with plenty of booze, which is what I have come to expect when Lloyd visits to be honest. Lloyd, Grant, and the Australians with big pockets joined Hans, Nick and I for the usual big barbecue at Nick's place.

Hans, who runs the plant here at the mine, brought his three kids along who are visiting Klipwal for a couple of weeks. He has two sons that are 8 and 10 and a daughter who is "15 days from turning 13." I talked to his daughter for 10 or 15 minutes, and I don't think I have ever met a more scarily intelligent 12-year-old. She spoke with a very proper and precise English accent, and summarized to me her plan of studying in the UK after school. She said she wants to either be an architect or an author, but wants to "have a law degree to fall back on." Her vocabulary was that of an English scholar and while she was talking to me she was sipping on a Smirnoff Ice. She's 12.

It was reassuring to witness her two younger brothers restore sanity in the world by chasing each other with burning sticks and whining about when the food was going to be ready all evening. Meanwhile, conversation roared on with the potential investors, Lloyd, and Grant. They were laughing when Lloyd told them he met me on a golf course, and they asked me the question so many have asked me since arriving here: Why did you come to the middle of nowhere in South Africa? It's a fair question, and one that I'm still attempting to answer fully.

Tomorrow should be very interesting, as I am sure Lloyd and others will be nervous about whether or not these potential investors will throw down some cash to really get this mine going. On the other hand, Lloyd is very good at always seeming in control, and if tonight was any indicator, they'll just be back eating pork chops and getting drunk on red wine no matter how tomorrow pans out. It's pretty fun to be along for the ride.

Ticks and Clicks

I’m sorry about the lack of posts in the past few days, but I was a bit under the weather this past weekend. The students left on Friday morning and I was pretty tired that day so I just stayed in relaxing. Saturday Nick and drove east, passing through the town of Pongola, with the aim to get to St. Lucia on the coast so I could dip my feet in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately there were hiccups, including myself feeling more and more tired and feverish, so we never made it out to the coast. Sunday was the same unfortunately, and I had so little energy I barely got out of bed. Monday they scheduled me an appointment with the doctor in town and I have now just arrived back in Klipwal from there. The doctor found that I have a case of Lyme disease, or as they like to call it here “Tick bite fever”, which I think sounds a lot more impressive and ominous. Turns out the two mosquito bites I had on my leg that were turning purple ended up being tick bites.

It’s nothing really to be worried about, but it does explain why I have had zero energy over the past few days and annoying aches and pains when I try to sleep. I’m on special antibiotics now and I should be back to normal as soon as tomorrow, so that’s good. It’s been extremely frustrating not being able to do anything fun or exciting over the weekend and just as frustrating not being able to go to work on Monday, but on the bright side I have been getting through a lot of Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I’m finally reading it.

I do have a little more insight on the Zulu language that I can talk about, as I have been picking up bits and pieces from Leonard and Phillimon as well as some of the students that came through last week. “Saubon” means hello and “yebo” means yes, for instance. I was very lucky though to be taught by one of the university students the intricacies of the clicking sounds used in the Zulu language. Like many of the African tribal languages spoken in South Africa (there are at least 9 different ones), Zulu uses clicking sounds in some of the words. Zulu uses three distinct clicks:

Version 1 is a soft click made by clicking the tip of your tongue just behind your two upper front teeth. It is soft but high-pitched, and there needs to be a decent amount of saliva behind your teeth for it to sound right.

Version 2 is a harder click but is still high pitched. It is made with the back of your tongue against the side or roof of your mouth, but your lips must be parallel and mouth slightly widened while making the clicking sound so it comes out as high-pitched.

Version 3 is a lower, deeper click that is performed virtually the same way as version two but with the lips slightly puckered to create the lower sound.

So there are some decent explanations of the clicks, but it can only really be done right when you hear them for yourself. A useful word that uses one of these clicking noises is the Zulu word for “sorry”. It is pronounced “KO-LEE-AY-SAH”, with the letter K here representing version 3 of the clicking noises. I’m not sure how it is spelled or how they represent the clicking noises in the alphabet yet, but that’s how it sounds. So “koliesa” for not posting in a while but hopefully I’ll be back to work soon with plenty more adventures to share!

My Crib

Here's the view from my front door...

And here's the house itself.

Just like every house here, there's a built-in barbecue out front. Click on the photos for bigger versions.

Kortnek with geology students

Late last night a group of 20 4th-year students from the University of Kwazulu-Natal geology department arrived at Klipwal along 4 instructors. I met them this morning and was assigned to lead them back down to the Kortnek prospect and show them around.

It was a great opportunity to talk to some of the instructors who were economic geologists. They invited me down to Durban where the university is located so I can take a look around and maybe even do a master's there if I end up getting really into this gold mining stuff, so that was pretty cool. It was even cooler talking to the students about their class, about Durban, and about South Africa in general. It was amazing how similar the dynamic of this class was to my geology class at St. Andrews. And just like some of our field trips, there were always a few people who you could tell were getting a bit tired of looking at rocks all day (been there!). The unbridled enthusiasm of the lecturer balanced against the general weariness and indifference of the class was all to familiar. Geology can be fun though!

I took them down to the same areas I described before, and I recognised most of the people that were working filling the hand-spun, home made mills and hammering away at the rocks. A lot of the people in the geology class spoke the Zulu language, and they got to talking to the artisanal miners, even getting a chance to spin one of the mills. The workers at Kortnek are nice, extremely hard-working people who are out there in the middle of nowhere scratching out a living selling tiny amounts of gold for cheap.

In a similar situation, the illegal miners making their homes underground in the Klipwal gold mine are now facing some trouble. Lloyd is still here and has gone underground again in search of more of these rogue miners. I'm not sure how dangerous or violent they are as people, in fact they probably aren't at all. The problem is that they are armed with hand-held drills and explosives and are using them without any discretion underground. Mines are carefully constructed with pillars and supports in ways that prevent the possibility of cave-ins and serious rock failures. When the illegal miners drill explosive charges in any gold-rich areas they can find, they are potentially destroying the structural integrity of the mine. This makes it dangerous for all of the Klipwal employees, hence Lloyd going down with his small militia to hunt them out.

Now it's a shame that you have these illegal miners who are fighting just to make a living being taken out and essentially thrown into jail. It's just even more damaging to leave them down there to wreak havoc on themselves, the mine, and its employees. It's not pretty, but what Lloyd is doing is just another step in getting the Klipwal mine into production again. There is always a chance that these illegals could be employed by the mine at a later time, but when they are caught with explosives, as they were last night, apparently there are looking at least a few years in jail.

Of course the root of this problem is held by the upper class black market dealers operating in South Africa. The gold being produced by the illegal miners is purchased and an often extremely low price and then sold on at the market price for HUGE profits. It's a sad but true blemish on the South African mining industry.

Now on a lighter note, I am going to join the geology class for a big braai-up and get to know a few people so I have somewhere to stay when I visit Durban!

Breaking News

Lloyd is back in town, and unexpectedly. I got a knock on my door at about 7 this evening and it was Lloyd, complete with handgun, knife, and night-vision scope. The previous night there was apparently a scuffle between some illegals who have been camped somewhere in the Klipwal mine and the security guards at the gate. Lloyd was informed of this and drove here this afternoon.

He went underground with Hans at about 7:30, and at around 9 I was eating dinner with Nick when he received a call from Lloyd saying that they had found two of them armed with explosives down at 8 level. They took them into custody and the police are on their way to arrest them. More later.

Kortnek

On Tuesday morning Nick sent me to check out Kortnek, a small artisanal gold mining prospect about 5 miles north of Klipwal. The Kwazulu-Natal University geology class is scheduled to visit there and he wanted to me to check out if it was safe, and said Kortnek can sometimes be “quite the experience.”

I was driven by Hans, the metallurgist who works in the plant lab. He’s the one the produces Klipwal’s finished product: sponge gold. In a controlled laboratory, he takes the gold concentrate after it has done its rounds in the processing plant and separates the gold from the waste material by using Mercury. The resulting sponge gold doesn’t looks a little bit like a cork made of gold, with numerous air holes and small imperfections. The gold color is not as bright and shiny as you would expect, but the sponge gold itself is about 95% pure and a cork-sized piece of sponge gold will fetch around $10,000 dollars with today’s gold prices.

Along with Hans, Leonard and Phillimon would once again accompany us to Kortnek, as they have been there on numerous occasions sampling soil over the past 5 years. With my backpacked full of food, water, and a few geological accessories I went to sit in the Land Rover and wait for Hans. Leaning against the passenger seat was a rifle, which was a bit surprising to see. Hans eventually finished with whatever he was doing and hopped in the driver’s seat. I asked him if the gun was necessary, and he said “just in case” while hiding a slightly creepy grin. Apparently the artisanal miners, who technically are illegal miners as the Kortnek prospect is owned by Lloyd and the Klipwal mine, have been known to be hostile in the past.

Up the dirt road we drove, leaving Klipwal to the west. The road eventually bends north and meets the road to Kortnek about 5 miles later. This road shoots east from the main plateau towards the Pongola river valley. We were nearing Kortnek, and the outskirts of any sort of civilization, when Hans stopped the rover at a small cement building called “The Restaront”. He asked for a cold drink, and apparently they didn’t have any, because no sooner than he asked, a woman ran out of the shop, down the road, and returned about five minutes later with a big 2 litre bottle of coke. That’s some dedicated service just to sell a coke.

Less than a mile after the shop, we turned off the main dirt road, which was ending just ahead anyway, and continued down a much less travelled road that skirted the side of a steep hill. The road continued to steepen until we had dropped a good 100 meters of elevation in a very short amount of time. With hillside to our right and a steep drop-off to our left, Hans methodically guided the rover over an awful dirt track. It was only about 8 am but the sun was already high enough in the sky for it to be hot out.

With the river bed and small hut-like dwellings hiding in the distance, Hans stopped the rover at the end of the drivable portion of the dirt track. A large, parched tree rose to about 30 feet with sprawling branches filled with various man-made curiosities. One of the was a cane-like stick with a spiralling Kudu horn attached to one end. We all exited the vehicle, Hans carrying the rifle over his shoulder and I with my backpack. It took about 5 minutes of walking down the dirt track before running into the first artisanal miner. Leonard and Phillimon immediately broke into conversation with him in Zulu and from his body language he motioned for us to look around. In the side of a hill was an enormous 4-foot wide, 10 foot long, and who knows how deep hole in the rock. They had been hand-drilling this with electric drills for over a year apparently, and it eventually yielded nothing.

As I would continue to discover upon walking around in Kortnek, life as an illegal artisanal miner requires extreme amounts of work in horrible living conditions for very little reward. Various groups of people, all working for themselves, employ a mining process that was used over 100 years ago. The men bash at the rock with hammers and drills while the women sit by the river grinding the rock into smaller, finer pieces. They then use homemade mills to get the pebbles into a fine enough material to process. Next, using dams and ramps constructed out of rocks in the river, the fine material is floated in water down the ramp which is covered in cloth towels. The cloth towels that they use have ridges, and the heavier gold particles sink and are caught between these ridges while the lighter material floats down the river. Ultimately, they use old, inefficient techniques for processing rock which they have very little geological understanding of. The little gold they produce is sold off to black market purchasers, usually coming in from Swaziland or Mozambique to the north, at a fraction of the market price.

The living quarters at Kortnek were simple shelters with plastic bags and tarps used for roof and wall cover. With all this talk of the artisanal miners being dangerous, I have to say I completely disagree. I could tell from being there that they were a group of people who probably knew nothing else in life than mining for gold. Their parents and grandparents would have been doing the same thing at Kortnek for the past century. The truth is that with artisanal mining practices, there is only so much you can get out of the ground. It’s quite clear that the easy stuff has already been mined at Kortnek so the miners are working much harder now for smaller returns. That is why Lloyd’s plan is to develop Kortnek into a working commercial mine, and aims to employ the artisanal miners that have been working there for years. I’m not sure if that will work, or how well the artisanals will take to working for a paycheck, but these miners have had it so tough that they might welcome it with open arms. I am struggling to think of a more difficult way to make a living.

It was an eye-opening experience indeed, but what happens at Kortnek is known to happen all around the world where there is gold. It goes to show the great lengths which people will go to try to get rich off the metal. I’m enjoying my experiences here so far, but I can’t say I’ve really been hit by the gold fever yet. Who knows, that may change a couple months from now.