It’s funny how certain blog posts seem to bring back fond memories for some readers. And it’s not always the stories you expect that end up resonating with the audience. To my surprise, this story turned out to be one of them. Many thanks for all the kind comments.
A Biographical Interlude
Tell me Ralph, how did you end up in Africa working down a mine? How did a middle class boy from southeast Kent, of distinctly average intelligence, end up in exotic places smashing rocks, and getting paid to do it?
Glad you asked. See.. I was lucky. Somewhere, sometime back in the 1980s there was a golden horseshoe flying about with my name written on it.
I graduated from a second-rate college which had a first-rate geology program in June 198…8…oh alright, if you must know, 1984. To my surprise, I landed a decent degree which gave me a few more career options than I might otherwise have had.
It’s Sporty From Brussels
But the hard fact remained, other than a few weeks geophysical work with the British Geological Survey*, I was an inexperienced geologist who knew bugger all about his chosen vocation. The career scrap heap beckoned one short month after graduation.
(*About 20 years ago, I tried to find the website of the British Geological Survey [the BGS] one day at work, only to land on a home page which showed a well muscled and tanned young man, racily clad in lunchbox hugging tight black speedos, diving into an open-air pool. Yes, the BGS.org web address is in fact owned by the Brussels Gay Sports organization. Who knew? Luckily nobody in HR was checking my web surfing history.)
There’s Better Ways to Spend 35 Quid
In a moment of financial frustration -I think I was getting £35 a week on the dole- I decided to buy a train ticket to London. I figured it was worth the fiver I’d spend on a day return from Broadstairs to London to go and knock on mining company doors. That would solve the problem – job offers would flood in and I’d be rich. Well, richer than thirty five quid a week, which wasn’t that hard.
My first port of call was the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square. Politically naive, I walked past the anti apartheid campaigners, went through the metal detector and made my way to the information desk.
I’m looking for a list of South African mining companies with offices in London. Says I.
Here you go. Said a nice-looking woman from behind the glass screen, handing me a large piece of paper with dozens of names on it.
Fuck me I said. Thanks.
An hour later I was trying to blag my way into the offices of Charter Consolidated (aka The Anglo American Corporation of South Africa) in Holborn. I tried really hard to get in, but the security guard was on to me, and was having none of it.
Can I see the human resources office please?
No. Sorry mate. You can’t come in. We’re not hiring.
But..How do you know? They might be?
No. Bugger off you oink.
Goodbye Mining, Hello Waitrose!
Disheartened, I was heading out the door contemplating a desperate future as a “replenishment associate” in grocery retail, when a man in a pin-stripe suit with an important looking briefcase asked me what I wanted at Charter Consolidated. I told him my story. Geologist blah blah… work blah blah…
And here’s where the Gods smiled on me, in the process emptying a huge bucket of sweet-smelling lucky dust on me from on high. He was the Human Resources manager. Recruiting geologists was one of his pre-occupations that month and to my total amazement he invited me in for an interview, there and then. Sneering idiotically at the security guard, I followed Mr. HR into the grandest offices I’d ever seen. Mind you, seeing as my dad worked in a textile dye house full of steam and pipes, I didn’t have much to compare it with so a portaloo would’ve look grand to me.
I did well in the interview because a month later I was on a plane to Johannesburg, convinced that I had life’s golden horseshoe stuffed up my arse.
Up Up And Away
My innate rectal luckiness was confirmed for me when Anglo sent me a business class ticket to Jo’burg. I’d never actually been on a plane before and would’ve been happy sitting on the toilet for 12 hours breathing in that blue toilet bowl cleaner, but no- my seat was upstairs, on the fabulously amazing bubble deck of the 747.
And… hell’s bells- there was an actual bar there, with a bunch of large South African businessmen standing around drinking martinis and smoking cigars. Yup. I’d arrived. I obviously had a gilded future ahead of me as a captain of the extractive industries.
Taking The Long Way Round
Back then, South African Airways couldn’t fly over mainland Africa because of anti-apartheid sanctions. Most African countries simply wouldn’t allow them to enter their airspace. That meant flying to Jo’burg the long way round – over the South Atlantic, down around the bulge of west Africa, adding a few hours to the trip. It also meant a refueling stop along the way in the Cape Verde Islands; a stop that became an important contributor to the island economy.
To be honest, my memory of the fine details of the flight is a little hazy. I was still in a state of euphoria at travelling so far from home. I was also getting steadily pickled on excellent South African wines and cognac. My newfound bubble friends had me wide-eyed with their Boys Own stories of Africa, gold mining and all the exciting shit I’d missed out on during my English grammar school up bringing.
I Really Was Incredibly Drunk
I think it was 2 or 3am local time when we landed on the main island and it was hot as hell. I’d never felt heat like it in my temperate hometown.
We were poured off the 747, down a dangerously old mobile staircase onto the runway. In the dark, we followed a badly marked path into the terminal where another well-stocked bar winked at me seductively. The terminal was lifted piecemeal from from a Graham Greene book, and I swear to this day it was made of bamboo canes and old rope, with spinning fans down the middle of the ceiling. But that must be me imagining things.
The plane was being refueled and sprayed down with clouds of some nasty insecticide stuff by sullen, overall-clad technicians with plastic tanks on their backs.
The Russians Are Coming
Strung across the middle of the lounge area was a rope cordon, one of those sticky red velvet ropes that keep the punters in line outside nightclubs. Behind it, at the other end of the lounge, was a large group of motley looking Europeans. Most of them were chain smoking, and clutched plastic carrier bags and brightly coloured carryalls. They were eating sliced dark bread, massive sausages and peeling oranges that they grabbed out of the carrier bags. Despite my wine haze, I couldn’t help noticing the slightly amateurish-looking armed guards, clutching ancient rifles, who prevented us from going past the rope.
Who are they? I asked one of my red-cheeked, tobacco-infused worldly friends, while staring like a moron at the strangers.
Russians he replied with barely suppressed hostility.
Really? Wow, Russians eh? Hoo-wee. Gosh.
I’m An Idiot
He looked at me with obvious pity in his eyes– somewhere in rural England a village was missing its idiot.
But I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen a Russian before. As far as I knew, we didn’t have them in Broadstairs. If we did have them, they’d have to be spies, intent on helping Moscow win the coming nuclear war, and if they got caught the British government would shoot them or trade them for British spies who’d been snared in the east because that’s how it worked on TV with George Smiley, wasn’t it?
Barbara: Really Ralph, that’s nice, more cake?
In fact, they were Russian soldiers, technicians and workers – on their way to Angola to reinforce the pro-Communist forces who were fighting a nasty bush war against the South African regime which, we found out a few years later, wasn’t going so well for Pretoria. Funny enough none of that got reported in the South African press, other than the odd South African victory.
Aeroflot was one of the only other airlines to stop in the Cape Verde islands. Our nocturnal stand off was repeated a couple of times a week when the scheduled flights landed a few minutes apart.
There weren’t many opportunities for 2 of the sides in the Cold War to look each other in the eye, but this was definitely one of them. The Russians glared at us, hostility radiating from them, while some of the rougher looking South Africans returned the compliment with extras. Sixty minutes later we were ushered back on to the plane, leaving Boris and the other sons of Lenin to their oranges and cheap cigarettes.
Into Africa
Hours later, we landed at Jan Smuts airport in Jo’burg and I stepped, hungover, onto African soil for the first time.
I was hypnotized. It still stands out as one of the truly life changing moments I’ve experienced, ranking up there with my first kiss (Amanda, I believe), my first proper pork sausage (Rooks The Butcher), and The Big Lebowski.
I was met by someone from the HR department. I think he could tell from my er… demeanour and odour, that it had been a long and arduous flight with abundant lubrication. A big athletic man (no, not from Brussels), he’d never worked down a mine, but boy, he knew how to fill in the requisite HR forms in head office the next day. When I thanked him for the business class seat his eyes narrowed, he frowned, and muttered Bloody idiots in Holborn, not again…
Hotel Motel Holiday Inn
He dropped me off at the Holiday Inn in downtown Jo’burg. I was still in in sensory overload -one amazing thing after another had happened- and in a state of mild shock. So, I did what the rules required; I buried the thousand questions I had till the next day and went to the bar for more food and wine.
One cursory look at the menu and my mental fuses finally blew. Fuck me does that really say “Springbok Steak in a Marula & wine sauce”? I hadn’t a clue what a Marula was but the fact that you could make a sauce from it and pour it over a dead springbok was encouraging.
It took me all of 3 seconds to order it, along with a stupidly cheap bottle of fine Cape red which I charged to the company account. I spent the next 2 hours sat at my window table watching as an African summer thunderstorm boomed and crashed around me, silhouetting the Jo’burg skyline with the most intense lightening I’d ever seen.
but I don’t think it does.
The End Of the Beginning
Two days later a driver dropped me off at the mine workers’ Single Men’s Hostel in the grubby little mining town of Orkney, 100 miles south of Jo’burg. I didn’t go home for two and a half years. It was goodbye transient-luxury hello back-to-reality.
And that’s how I started in the mining business. There was only one attempted murder at the hostel during my 3 months there.
Don’t Forget
We all have our “career start” stories. What’s yours? If you have a good one, I’d love to hear it via the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe to urbancrows.com via the small town subscription box at the top of my home page. I’ll be sure to mail you a box of rotten marula fruit as a nice thank you.
1980s South Africa was an incredibly racist place, the definition of legally institutionalized racism, and that’s what eventually drove me away from that gorgeous, mystical place. Ultimately, there’s no place in civil society for racism -casual or institutional- and we all need to stand up to it when we come across it.
I remember the wonderful holiday we had in South Africa with Paul and his Mother. Pure magic.
As an ex Anglo (coal) boy myself I have been following your tales, or blog!, on a nd off for a few years now.
I was recruited in 78, arrived by 747 in Jan 79 with my wife and dropped off in Witbank.
Still based in Pretoria but currently locked down in Bangladesh.
Still mining coal.
Love the story, Ralph! I pissed myself laughing 🙂
(So then he said, they’re Russians. Really Ralph, that’s nice, more cake?)
Excellent post. My story is far, far less glamorous. I graduated Penn State in the early 1990’s just as the oil industry dumped hundreds upon hundreds of young geologists back on the rolls of unemployed.
At job fairs they told us to go back and get a Masters Degree. I wasn’t having that at all. So I ran off and became a boat captain in the Florida Keys for a while.
When I finally shook off the Peter Pan period, I found an urgent need for geologists in Southern Florida. And in my ignorance, I was thrilled.
I drove up to Miami in my little Isuzu pick up truck. No air conditioning, 100% humidity, and 90 degrees in the shade. I pulled into the parking lot, next to a run down drilling rig, sweat stains the size of watermelons in my only white dress shirt.
They hired me immediately…for the whopping sum of $18,500 per year. In Miami. In 1994.
That’s where I learned about the poverty line, by looking up to it.
That job lasted about 18 months. I sampled septic tanks, drilled monitoring wells, rode into excavations in the bucket of a back hoe.
Probably the best discovery I made back then was Cuban Coffee.
We were working on pulling a corroded old gasoline tank out of the ground in Little Havana in Miami. This was a typical little place, gas station, mechanic bays, bodega and a little lunch counter in the back. The owner took pity on my, sweating my head off, burnt to the color of a ripe tomato. So on the morning of the second day, he came out with a little, four ounce styrofoam cup and several little plastic thimbles…the kind that creamer comes in.
He poured me a thimble full of this caramel colored coffee. And to this day, I remember the smell. It was the divine essence of coffee.
But I was completely confused. I thought it was a sample or something. Maybe he was letting me try it, before giving me a whole cup…
I knocked mine back like a shot and was transfixed. The taste was as good as the smell. He poured me another and I went to work. Periodically, he’d come out and give me another…and another.
By 10 am, I looked around because I could clearly hear a ringing bell. When I asked him what the alarm was, he almost fell into the pit, laughing.
And that was my first experience with too much caffiene.
But we became fast friends over that two week period. I had lunch at the counter, where his wife and sister treated me to fried yucca, piccadillo, ropa vieja, and many other traditional Cuban dishes. I probably gained 10 pounds.
But to me, that is the spirit of why I became a geologist. To go out into the world and see new things. I thought I’d be finding oil in some exotic land. Instead, I sampled septic tanks in Miami…but I still made discoveries, just of a different sort.
Regards,
Matt B.
Thanks Matthew. Coffee and septic fields! Stuff you never forget.
I love the way you remember and share with us, great stuff!
I qualified as a geologist in South Africa, got my honours degree in 1979. Then had to do 2 years of national service, and then into the bush. In my case, mostly aerophoto mapping in the Limpopo Mobile Belt (as it was called then) in the far northern part of the country. Extremely hot and dry, almost no real outcrop, but I think I made a decent map (for General Mining Union Corporation as it was then) based on the photo’s and field-checking, looking at float. Stayed in a (very hot!) CI Contractor caravan (read: white box). Uncomfortable, but some of the best field days of my life.
Got into the data side of things (geostatistics, but also fixing other people’s printers…) and eventually proudly wrote little (HPGL) programs to draw projections of borehole traces, etc., and (BASIC) programs to calculate “best cuts” etc. for West Rand gold mines and the odd platinum mine. For JCI (when that still existed).
And then moved to Ghana with my family as (gold) exploration manager there. Extremely hectic time, feeling the friction between slow pace of life (and work…) in West Africa and the sometimes unrealistic expectation of Head Office in Johannesburg. By 2000/2001, been there, done that, moved to Europe and later started into the consulting business, advising governments on mining governance issues, mining sector growth, etc. Saw lots of travel into other countries then, including Africa, but as far as Mongolia and Colombia, but hardly ever in the field, however :(. Now based in Zambia and in my free time, I travel as much as possible. You can look up Ron’s Rambling on WordPress if you’re interested.
Keep your stories coming, please.
Thanks Ron for the kind words.
Ralph…great story! And thank you for the shout out “Ultimately, there’s no place in civil society for racism -casual or institutional- and we all need to stand up to it when we come across it.”
There is NO PLACE in civil society – and we have to wonder if we are a “civil society” when we are witness to what is going on right now. Executions of people broadcast on TV. WTF. Stand up – make yourself heard – write about it.
My first job story – luck pure luck! I knew how to print – and after doing the rounds at the Geological Survey of Canada in hmmm, early 1980’s, and leaving my hand printed application in the offices of about +30 scientist (and being total several times that women would never be invited into a bush camp because, didn’t you know (don’t they teach you anything at school) women menstruate and this physical defect of your species attracts bears into camp 😉 – I was interviewed via telephone and invited to join a mapping team in the Wopmay Terrane of the Slave Province because the party chief said – if i could print clearly then he would be able to read my map notes. Who knew…good penmanship would get me my first mapping job.
And oh my, it the best summer of my whole entire life – traversing solo and mapping mostly granites (monzo granite = grains size +/- biotite so even a 1st year could do this!) in the NWT – amazing. Airphotos, a brunton, a rock hammer, a rapidpidograph pen 🙂 and off to work! I was fortunate to have summer jobs as a mapper for the next 4 years! My next industry job…different story but by then I was “in” and being an exploration geo was in my system. No going back.
I caught the bug mapping 2B year old metamorphics in South Harris in the Outer Hebrides of the northwest coast of Scotland for my final year project. A happy month traipsing around moors and lakes, swigging whiskey and enjoying glorious scenery. Never wanted to do anything else after that. Now I want to write the stuff down. We (earth scientists) all have great stories that we should commit to paper.
This was totally hilarious! I was laughing out loud, probably because it is so familiar. There I was, fresh from university in the oak-lined avenues of Stellenbosch, innocent as a lamb, when Gold Fields offered me my first job as a trainer. We were supposed to teach the workers English for the blasting certificate and I happened to be qualified to teach…German. But never mind. They put me up in the little mining village of Glenharvie, which we jokingly called Glenhorrible, not far from the town of Hillshaven, which we called Hellshaven, not far from Westonaria, which we called Desolaria. I arrived at Jan Smuts Airport, was put on a minibus, and we drove and drove and drove right out of Jo’burg past Soweto and into the West Rand. (Hey?! Isn’t Gold Fields’ head office in Fox Street in Jo’burg? Where are we going?? Help.) There the HR guy dropped me and my suitcase and my box with a few pots and books at a one-bedroom flat for graduates in the Singles Quarters. Oh my. I had no idea what was about to hit me. Within a month I flew back home and was crying my eyes out about how horrible it was. My parents, to their credit, packed me right back on the plane. I worked for Gold Fields for the next 12 years. It was a transformative experience. The best – and wildest – years of my life. Gave me an enduring love for all things Mining. I even married a Geologist.