4th of July and we’ve need travelling for three weeks now. Sure doesn’t feel like it, Annelie reckons time has gone by way faster than she can get to grips with. I suspect being ill has a lot to do with it, and my benefit is that I keep this journal.
Disclaimer and fair warning, this post is a LOOOOONG one....
We’re all ready by 09:00 but the driver, Regate, only arrives closer to 10:00 (or 09 o’ clock, Africa Time). We hop into his green Toyota land cruiser (the dominant 4x4 in these parts. Some Nissans here and there, almost NO Jeeps. They’re pretty crap, according to the locals, and even a brand new one will spill it’s guts by the first month, oil everywhere. Sorry to have to bear the bad news, Nick... maybe you want to get a real 4x4 instead??)
Anyways, it’s about an hour or more to Moshi and then hang a left to the Merirani mountains (also called Blue Mountains), to the mines. We chat quite a bit along the way, he’s just had a daughter yesterday (what the hell you doing here???), he’s been driving for a few years now, he shows us his house on the way out of Arusha. We talk soccer, politics, crazy driving behaviour in Arusha and about Cape Town and London. He stops to pick up hitchhikers, I mention that when he’s down in Cape Town for the 2010 World Cup, NEVER pick up hitch hikers. South Africa is unfortunately not as open, trusting and friendly as the rest of Africa.
We turn off onto a little dirt road, come across a few settlements and pass Kilimanjaro airport. NO sign of Kilimanjaro, as it’s very overcast. How a mountain that big can hide in plain view is an act of pure wizardry. As we approach the mountain range we see a huge white monolithic structure. This, is TanzaniteOne, a South African based company and they’re the biggest dog in the yard, and it shows. They have a massive chunk of the hill, all razor wire fence, big gates and guards. Looks like a very slick operation and {our driver} fills us in a little bit more. Basically, a few smaller Tanzanian companies (including Roika Mining) struck it lucky in a few patches. The South African conglomerate came in with lots of money and powerful friends in government (who are now board members, of course) and secured the lion’s share of the mining rights, basically pushing the others off to less favourable strips. As you can imagine, there is a LOT of tension between big brother and the little mines (about 15 or so). Every so often we are halted to allow these huge yellow mining trucks to pass, loaded with soil and rock which they are transporting to a processing facility on the other side. Police escort every single load, and we get a warning look. Also hear tales of other mines attempted to grab some of the rock excavated from TanzaniteOne’s site... and getting shot on site. Of course, nothing happens to the perpetrators... since it’s a government venture too. Everybody wins, except the common Tanzanian. I won’t be surprised if even half what we heard was true. I pondered what my perspective would have been had I met someone from TanzaniteOne instead, and THEY gave us the tour? It’s easy to judge isn’t it?
We pass the pillboxes and fenced in structures to enter a much more desolate area: little mining companies boxed in by corrugated plating, little hand written signs declaring each name. It’s all dust, and soot and garbage, rickety wooden structures and grim looking (but smiling none the less!) miners. The place and people looks like something from Mad Max, motorbikes and all.
We arrive at our first stop, a mine shaft in block “B”. I don’t recall how the blocks are divided, but I do know that the best tanzanite so far had been discovered in block D. Roika has 4 mines, 2 in block D and one in B and C each.
The “gates” open and here we are. Rickety wooden living quarters, a rancid smelling latrine and a hole in the ground (one for the latrine, the other is the mine shaft, I correctly assume) with little wooden planks disappearing into nothingness. Next to it is a broken compressor, another compressor and various pipes for air and power snaking into the pit. Hey, at least it’s all covered by a roof. The miners themselves are quite friendly. I inspect some of the equipment they use, manage to snap off a few pics. It’s basically a flashlight (LED flash, no less!) glued or attached to a rubber band, that goes around their head. No masks to speak off.
We wait around a bit for the manager to arrive. Once he gets there we introduce ourselves, get some helmets (shame, they even cleaned them for us, and clearly there the very best 2 helmets they have!) and we’re all set. I lock all my stuff in the car, grab my flash and we’re off into the hole!
I don’t know what I was expecting for this part of our adventure. But it was slow going down the shaft, one guy with torch strapped to noggin leading the way, showing me where to grab and step (don’t touch the power cables!). Another guy after me, and then Annelie and Regate. My hands are quickly covered in a black oily substance. I don’t wanna know...
Easy does it. I snap a few pics on the way. Not too long before we’re on a landing, maybe 10 meters down. It’s way slippery, and right next to you is another hole that goes down another 50m or so. We’re heading straight, on our hands and knees. We go for another 10 meters, crawling and staying low. The air is filled with a fine dust, and it’s hot! Very hot and clammy; darkness wherever a torch doesn’t shine and me with the damn big canon and flash... eish.
We arrive in a spot where we can all file in and sit quite comfortably (still hot, sweating like a moose) and we chat a bit about mining life. Regate translates for us, we ask about work conditions, hours, how do they dig for tanzanite, how do they clear the rock, who does the blasting, accidents, how far the current 2 passages go.
In order:
Work conditions very very hard (duh!). Regate mentions on the way out that mostly all the miners smoke ganja. This is to relax them while they spend most of their days under ground. The guys tend to go a little loopy from time to time. No counselling in this part of town...
They generally work 8 to 10 hours a day, seldom coming back up. Air is pumped down the shafts by compressors. They do come up for bathroom breaks, sometimes.
They drill into the rock, make room for Nitro charges, then they have to get another company in to place the charges and do the blasting.
They pile the loose rock and soil into these big canvas bags, then form a conga line and pass it over to the next guy up the chain. HARD, hard labour.
Accidents are often. The worst is, we find out later, is that because you have so many small companies mining on top of each other, it’s entirely possible that your neighbour is mining towards your tunnel and happens to be blasting that day. A lot of miners get killed this way.
The passages in the current mine extend 300 and 700 meters in opposite directions.
We call it quits after this 10 meter crawl and head back out.
Thoroughly dirty and chuffed to be out of there! They bring us little packets of washing powder (I’ve noticed before, at the Roika tented lodge, when Moses was helping me clean the Bullet, that when I asked for soap, I got washing detergent. Heh.) and water to wash our hands. The manager also hands Annelie a handful of tanzanite and quartz! Ok, none of this stuff is worth much, but still cool! Load up the Landcruiser and off we go to a D block shaft. Some of the miners hop on the back. The D block operation looks to be a little more sophisticated and looks like they at least have some form of mechanisation. And what I mean by that is that it looks like they raided and pillaged an old truck’s diff lock and jerry rigged it to attach to a 4x4 or vehicle to operate a winch, which lowers and raises a huge iron bucket. Also, the shaft is covered by an iron slider on rails. And they have chicken coops here. So fresh eggs everyday!
We move over to another covered building where the other shaft is located. This one goes straight down, at about a 75% decline. “How deep?” we ask. 100 Meters, the reply. Can’t back out now, let’s do this! Our miner escorts very thoughtfully brought the helmets we wore at the previous site along, and we don them again. (quick note here: good thing we had helmets. I must have banged my head at least 20 times in that last excursion)
Treacherous descent. I feel like an extra for a Cirque de Soleil act! Walter (one of our miner escorts) goes first and pats on spaces where I should put my foot. My (very heavy) camera with flash is hanging from my neck and acting as a human shield for the shower of little rocks and debris now falling down my neck and shirt, arms, and into my socks, courtesy of Annelie and Evans (the other miner escort) and Regate above me. There are hessian bags littered on the wooden slats, which Walter keeps pushing further down. PolePole (pronounced “polly polly”, or Slow Slow, in Swahili Haraka is fast. Hatari is danger). Annelie and I keep calling to each other to make sure the other is ok, meanwhile I’m shitting myself. Often I get a “baby, hoe ver nog?” (baby, how far to go still?). I reply not far, but she wants to go back. I say no man, it’s we’re almost there. Then a few minutes later I’m asking her if we should go back and she either doesn’t hear me or says she’s ok! And so we go, dweedle-dee and dweedle-dum (or dumb and dumber, for a more modern approximation).
PolePole.
Eventually, for what feels like an eternity we reach the bottom, hessian bags littering the bottom of the shaft, so it’s a soft, squishy landing. A bit of crouching and shuffling and we reach an antechamber. Off the one end is another iron door that I’m told leads down another 700 or so meters and then another kilometre a horizontal direction. The air is much cooler down here though, not at all the sauna we were in at site B. Annelie makes it down and the miners give us a fist bump and a smile. We ask a bit about the site, when was the last time they’ve struck a vein. 2006, comes the reply (site B was 2004). So these guys have been mining these holes for a good 3-5 years, and found zip. They switch off all the lights and the only smidge of illumination is the phosphor on my watch. Hey, at least I know what time it is! We politely ask to be taken back up, but not before I snap a few pics of these guys. It occurs to me that they’ve never had a pic down here “in the office” so to speak.
We ascend the rickety looking (but surprisingly sturdy and solid) zigzag scaffolding to the top, asking them to pause so I can take more shots (and pause long enough for the dust to clear a bit).
We reach the top panting from exhaustion. That is hard work. My camera at this stage is absolutely filthy and covered in dust and specks of graphite. Our hands also shimmer in the light as the sun reflects off the graphite flecks. I don’t even bother to wash my hands this time.
Quite eager to show off the other site, we pile into and onto the Landcruiser and we’re off the third and final stop. This one is in block C. Same kinda deal, corrugated zinc plate fencing, with a main gate of some sort, slightly larger site than the other two, crew living quarters consisting of wooden structure banged together from scraps of wood, a roof and chicken wire for windows (and a fire pit in this one. Classy!), chicken coop in the corner, chickens cruising the yard, big compressor (switched off) and a structure that probably covers the mine shaft. Helmets on, here we go again.
Decline is much friendlier, at about a 45 degree angle. I do my best crab impersonation down the stairs. PolePole. Walter leads the way again, Annelie next, another nameless miner, me, Evans and Regate. Not as deep as the last one, and also quite cool. We also sit in an antechamber and it’s here where we get the biggest insights into miner life (which I summarised previously). These guys are just average Joes, trying to make a living. They don’t have much of an education, this is what they do, and they do it well. They have families to support, food to put on the table and risk their lives every day for a glimmer of a chance to strike it rich. They DO actually share in any finds they make, and Luca gives them Tanzanite to sell or use as they see fit. So they do have motivation and purpose. And to see a big company like TanzaniteOne, with all the toys and right equipment is very disheartening for them. But what can they do? The whole experience, in the short 2 or so hours we spent out there was very humbling. All of this is translated by Regate, since their English is non existent
I ask the golden question: so how many woman have you had down your mines? I don’t need a translator to tell me the answer. They shake their heads vigorously, adamant that no woman has ever come down here, or would ever want to. Big smiles and laughter as they congratulate Annelie, fist bumps all round saying “she STRONG woman!”, making muscles and sharing a boisterous laugh. We call it a day and ascend for the last time. More fist bumps.
PS: did I mention I was happy for the helmets? Well, on this particular ascent, I was in such deep thought, I didn’t concentrate where I was sticking my noggin and 5 meters from the top I banged my head on a particularly sharp piece of rock so hard my teeth rattled! I almost knocked myself the hell out. A bit dazed, I stood still for a sec, thanked goodness I was ok and continued. I’m very confident in saying without the helmet I would have cracked my skull, no doubt.
I promise Walter, Evans and the gang that I’ll send Mr Roika the pics from today, so that he can print it out and bring it to them. They’re very very happy to hear that. One the way out we drop everyone off, saying our goodbyes and we head back to Arusha. Regate (Ree-gaa-tea) picks up a few more hitch hikers (shame, it’s an awesome thing to do for people here) and we have to stop and wait again for 2 more HUGE mining trucks with ore and police escort before we can exit the main security gates.
By the time we get back to Roika’s, it’s late afternoon. We hop through the showers, clothes and all. I was my hair and beard separately. I have grit and sand EVERYWHERE. My camera is trashed, and I spend the next hour gently blowing it clean with air before attacking it with a fist full of wet wipes, lens cleaner, soft lens tissue and kisses. “There there, all better”, I coo.
The others arrive back from their Serengeti adventure, and we swop out stories.
But I’ll save that for another post :)
Highlights: seeing a tanzanite mine, chatting to the locals
Pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?uname=Gerhard.nel.za&cuname=Gerhard.nel.za&tags=Mining
[G & A], out
Hapana Santi = no thanks
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