Gold, Goats, and IPods

It was back to business today and lots of things were happening at the mine. I suited up to go down to 9 level, the deepest I’ve been so far, to check out what they call the “J”reef. This is the zone with the highest grade of gold mineralisation, and actually has places with visible gold. Prior to today, the areas of gold ore that I have seen are mineralised with pyrite. There are tiny microscopic pieces of gold hiding against and within the pyrite crystals which get separated out by various circuits within the processing plant. Today I would actually see gold with the naked eye, none of this fool’s gold tomfoolery.

On the way down to the 6 level adit, Thys stopped the Unimog and found a baby goat lying curled up on the side of the dirt track. The normally stone-faced Thys instantly melted into letting out the classic “Aaaawwwwwwwwwwwww”, as did a few of the miners in the back of the truck. It was exceedingly cute to be fair. Thys picked up the bread box-sized goat (I played 20 questions with Leonard today to help him with his English) and I could see a bit of the umbilical cord still attached to its black coat. Thys reckoned it was born just the night before. I’ll bring my camera next time!

He eventually let the goat free, hopped back on, and took us to the mine entrance. Slowly Phillimon, Leonard and I worked our way down to 9 level from 6 level, about 120 meters of descent on ladders. Fortunately the ladders were not rusty at all and seemed a lot sturdier than the previous adrenaline-inducing ladders at 4 level last week. After mapping down on 9 and 8 level, we returned up the ladders and by the time I reached 6 level I will admit I was pretty exhausted. Not winded like I was playing soccer yesterday, but walking out from 6 level my legs and arms seemed to be shaking all over the place. Typing this up tonight I can tell you that I am pretty sore all around. I guess I haven’t really done much uninterrupted ladder-climbing in my life until now.

I showered down and returned to the surveying office for lunch with Phillimon and Leonard. We looked at some of the samples we took and found a good one of “J”reef with some specks of visible gold, although most of the shiny stuff was the usual pyrite. That’s when I played 20 questions with Leonard, and he also asked me about a few “electronic devices” that he had seen me use in the past couple weeks. He recognized that I had an Ipod but did not know what it was used for. I got it out and showed him how it’s used for listening to music and various other things, and let him play around with the wheel. He landed on T. Rex and played a song, laughing at first but then he seemed to enjoy it a little. Explaining to him the process of getting the music from a CD to a computer to the Ipod proved quite difficult but I think we got there in the end. Leonard was also very interested in my laptop and the amazing things it was able to do. It was a perfect example of things we all take for granted nowadays when it’s difficult to realise the amount of people that will never have the privilege of enjoying things like listening to music on an Ipod.

Tomorrow I’ve been told that 20 students and 5 instructors from the nearby University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban will be arriving at the mine. They’ll be camping out here for the next two days and I will be partly in charge of showing them around the place and a bit underground. I’ll finally get to chat with some kids my age, so the next couple days should be fun!