Things Geologists Do.

Answering The Call Of Nature

This week, Urbancrows tackles one of the more fragrant subjects that other lesser blogs won’t touch. A few weeks back, some friends and I were discussing field dump stories. Actually, someone asked the question “What’s your worst toilet experience in field?” which triggered a prolonged discussion that went downhill fast. If you’re of a nervous disposition, stop reading now and check out my harmless posting on crows or classical music instead. If you’re made of sterner stuff, don’t forget to read the comments at the end of this piece. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me their own personal misadventure.

Geologists Are Perfect & Don’t Poop.

It was obvious from the number of stories that popped up around our table that this is something that even exploration and mining geologists have to do despite their physical perfection. But it’s not always a simple operation to perform, particularly when you’re suffering from one of the myriad intestinal ailments that can and will afflict us. There’s an entire book to be written on geologists and their beloved parasites, including the worryingly-named Beef tapeworm (Taenia saginata), which stars in a great story told to me by a well-known consultant who acquired one in Africa. But our focus today is poop.

Planes And Pork

Anyone who’s worked in the bush has at least one No.2-related adventure tucked away in the smellier recesses of their memory banks. My personal favourite is a story told to me by the actual perpetrator of the messy event; it involved a light aircraft flight, a bout of food poisoning (a rancid pork chop I think) and a cool box but, alas, it’s not my story to tell. Suffice to say, if a stranger ever offers to tell you a story with those intriguing ingredients, grab a beer, sit down, buckle up, grab the wet wipes and thank the Gods you weren’t in the plane.

Honey But No Bees

Anyone who’s worked down an old mine knows that your toilet options are limited when nature’s call has to be answered. There’s the “honey wagon” – a rancid rail car tank with a couple of seats on it that gets parked at a major tunnel intersection and fills up over time. You do NOT want to be around when one tips over, trust me on that.

Or there’s dozens of abandoned tunnels and exhausted stopes to choose from. Invariably, the old workings become nasty minefields, best avoided in the darkness, unless you have absolutely essential work to carry out.

Gnawing At The Bowels

You know the feeling, right? It might hit you on a remote field traverse across a rock-strewn slope, or perhaps you’re driving along in the 4×4 with your assistant on a lonely, overgrown forest road.

Three hours after a hastily eaten breakfast of something luke warm and unrecognizable, a vague sense of discomfort comes over you -something’s hugely amiss down below. Was it lunch; the warm cheese sandwich that you left on the back seat? Was it the lovely mountain stream you found with the delicious, cold, crystal water? Was it… ah, it matters not.

It steadily gives way to a bestial gnawing at the bowels with cramps and a drawn-out gurgle or 6 thrown in for good measure. Now you’re sure. Something cold and evil has wrapped itself around your lower intestine and is gradually squeezing the contents out of them with only one possible outcome.

Open The Bloody Window

Your colleague tries gamely to ignore what’s going on, but the windows are closed, the heating’s cranked up and the cab fills with the muffled squeaky sound of denim on plastic seat as you clench your cheeks in quiet desperation. Just as well you’re the one driving as it takes your mind off the colonic anarchy that’s about to be unleashed.

With the briefest of warnings, the gnawing turns into the “Oh shit, it’s happening” moment. You stop the truck and vanish into the undergrowth quicker than a student after a free pint; the sense of relief tarnished only by the horror of forgetting the TP tucked away deep in your pack.

Gonch Funeral

It’s odds on that every field geo has buried at least one pair of underpants. Hands up, come on. Don’t be shy. I know I have. Mine (I believe they were boxers) are buried in a shallow grave in the Baluchistan desert of Pakistan, fetid testimony to 1) the need to avoid eating the local curried goat no matter how delish it might be, and 2) my inability to get out of the sleeping bag in time to deal with a nasty attack of Abdul’s Revenge.

The entire event was spiced up by the knowledge that there might be camel spiders lurking under every rock waiting for a tasty dangled morsel to nibble.

That particular ailment stuck with me for months, rearing its ugly head every time I felt sick or run down, including one fine, foggy morning on the Yorkshire Dales, hiking to an old Roman road with my then girlfriend, now wife. Thank the Lord for dry stone walls and abundant heather.

Definitely No Silver Lining

My most recent “event” (ah hem) took place in Chile last March when I was visiting a silver project at an abandoned mine site and was caught short after too much local coffee at breakfast (a rookie error, I admit.) As I squatted behind an old collapsed wall, MEC field pants down around my ankles, the wind was blowing, kicking up the Atacama sand into a scratchy whirlwind of dust around me.

I hand dug a hole in a small sand dune that had built up in a corner of the wall. Mid-delivery, the abject idiocy of my choice of venue became clear when I dropped the first sheet of despoiled TP.

It was immediately picked up by the dust devil, only to spin with the grace of a dancer up to head height. It blew round and round my head in slow motion, an art installation of brown pigment on paper, as I watched in horror, unable to prevent what was coming next.

It was only through the judicious use of my hammer as a paper weight that I was able to escape unscathed, although the hammer took some cleaning afterwards.

Don’t Eat The Salad

My former boss and close friend told me a great story from his time in China in the 1970s. (He also has another story involving what started out as a white linen suit and a swanky hotel lobby in India, but I’ll save that for another piece.) He was part of a small team visiting projects in parts of rural China that had yet to experience any modernization. In one town, the toilet facilities in their billet consisted of a long pit with a concrete bench over it. Cut into the bench were slots that you balanced your arse over to do the business.

Late one night, he headed out to take care of the necessaries. There were no lights, so carrying a flashlight, he dropped his pants, sat down on the bench and got on with his business. Mid-dump he heard a noise from the pit below and shone the flashlight down between his legs.

Looking down between his thighs he could see 2 things. One set of ginger-haired genitalia (his) and a pair of distinctly human eyes just in front and below the genitalia (definitely not his).

A man – a local farmer- was standing in the pit below, knee deep in human waste, expectantly holding a shovel under my colleague’s arse, waiting for the rain of fresh fertilizer for his vegetables. Salad was off the menu from then on.

Now It’s Your Turn

Anyways, I could go on and on, but I’d prefer to beef this up with some real-life readers’ stories. Let me know if you’ve had any particularly choice experiences via the comments below and I’ll add them in.

And first up…

Brent Cook Says Don’t Eat The Yellow Fish

“Oh my, I know that feeling from the lower gut that says, “you got 30-seconds dude, this is gonna be ugly and embarrassing”. Could speak of shitting on pigs in Tibet, a crowd of kids in Kenya, cockroaches streaming up the drain while squatting over a hole in Turkey. But let’s take the scenic route. The most romantically placed loo I had the pleasure of using was off Manus Island in PNG. The door was a luxury with nothing behind it but sticks over the clear blue sea. I made a mental note to not eat the yellow fish.”

Reader Duncan sent this timely advice:

“My belt-below-the-ankles anecdote takes the form of a simple piece of advice: don’t eat the pork in rural Africa…

Having escaped the 30 pairs of eyes that make up the typical entourage of inquisitive central African locals, I had the slightly awkward experience of making direct eye-contact with a very nearby pig for the duration of the episode. This particular pig had an expression of impatience manifested by its slavering chops and deadpan stare that seemed to say “I don’t know why you’ve gone to all the effort of burying that.” It turns out truffles are not the only delicacy pigs harbour a sufficiently intense interest in to entice them to probe downwards, snout-first, into the fragrant abyss. I reiterate, don’t eat the pork in rural Africa.”

And Thanks To Andy “Gas Tank” Jackson

My first job out of high school was as a field assistant with JCI in South West Africa (now Namibia). The geo in charge of the camp (who shall remain nameless to preserve his dignity) announced one day, after a visit to the camp long drop that it stank and something needed to be done.  As with most exploration camps, this long drop was small, roofless, with plywood walls surrounding a wooden thunder box. With the hot summer sun, the smell and flies soon built up, and the lime that we scattered into the hole from time to time couldn’t keep up with the task. Our leader decided that it would be too much trouble to disassemble the building, fill in the old hole, dig a new one and rebuild the structure and he announced his alternative plan of sterilizing it, by pouring a small amount of petrol in the pit and burning the contents. 

So our hero duly sallied forth into the smelly structure, armed with a tin of petrol, siphoned out of one of the trucks. There was a short pause while we could hear the petrol being poured into the long drop, then the sound of a match being struck; a second later there was a whooshing roar of air and all four plywood sides of the building were flattened like cardboard, giving us a fleeting view of his silhouette, against a sheet of flame. A moment later there was a thumping as parts of the disintegrated thunder box returned to earth, along with a pattering, as the offending contents of the long drop fell like rain, over a wide area.  “Shit!  I guess I didn’t use quite so much petrol last time,” our hero observed sheepishly, wiping his spattered face and singed hair. “I don’t think I will be wearing these clothes again.”

The Burrito Incident. Thanks Curt.

“My geophysical field partner needed to take a mid morning break to relieve himself.  He trotted off into the bushes while I pulled out a can of chewing tobacco and waited. A couple minutes later I heard screaming and then what sounded like a stop-drop-and-roll technique to extinguish oneself if on fire coming from the brush.  Not wanting to invade his privacy, I waited patiently and yelled “everything come out ok”, he whimpered back “not really”. He bravely emerged from the brush with the look of defeat on his face and said “I’m covered in shit”. While laughing uncontrollably and semi-choking on my chew, he informed me that he was stung mid-squat directly on the family jewels causing him to tip over backwards and roll through his newly deposited gas station breakfast burrito. No, I didn’t have to remove the stinger, but he did have to ride in the bed of the truck for the remainder of that field day.”

Beware The Jobby, Thanks Neil.

(Urbancrows here… For you North Americans, I should explain that in British slang a Jobby is a turd).

“A ‘countryman’ story that sticks in my mind, and in my nostrils, relates to the Porgera open pit gold mine in the PNG Highlands. During a visit in the late 90’s we went into the pit early one morning to view the ore to be mined and there was a distinctive pong in the high-grade. As I was new to the site, I was told to be careful where I stood, because every night there was an invasion of dozens of locals into the pit who collect rocks with visible gold for processing off-site the next day. Whilst gathering, there is the occasional bodily urge, so if the assay lab was slow, you could conduct grade control by turd-spotting. It was remarkably accurate. What I never did find out, was if a jobby made from reconstituted cassava was preg-robbing.”

Dick & His Beans.

“Hmmmm……”famous consultant”, African steak tartare, two air hostesses and a premature evacuation………..yep, heard THAT one from the “horse’s mouth” so to speak. Likewise, the light aircraft, the rancid meat and the cool box (not to mention high-level VP exploration visitor and wife???!!!). I near bust a gut laughing when the author of THAT particular episode regaled me with the story in Bolivia in 1996 !!!

One of mine was in Western Australia in 1981 while mapping a VMS property in the middle of the Yilgarn craton. Me and my fieldy, Pete, had been in the bush about a month without seeing another soul. We slept in a caravan (WA winter) and had been enjoying a high protein diet including my favourite chilli con carne recipe with additional beans for “entertainment” value. Anyway, one day the regional exploration manager shows up with a young lady geo in tow. That evening we are all seated in the caravan after eating a particularly lethal dose of my chilli and Pete and I would alternately make excuses to go outside for “relief” !!!! During the conversation the gal informs us she had been in a serious car crash a couple of years earlier and had smashed up her face. When I remarked that I could see no evidence of this she responded that the surgeons had fixed her face up really well and that the only lasting effect was she had lost her sense of smell !!! Pete and I immediately RELAXED much to the disgust of the chief geo and the puzzlement of the gal?!!! The remaining couple of days together was a GAS !!!

According to my VP Exploration boss at the time (now a world reknowned consultant – you know who you are!!!) this story has circulated all around Australia in the subsequent years. All I can say is, accept no substitutes………..it was ME !!!”

Don’t Forget

The Cockneys of Olde London Towne called it “taking an Eartha Kitt” in their rhyming slang. We’ve all done it, and the chances are you do it more than once a week so why not talk about it? If you have a good field poo story, I’d love to hear it via the sanitary, bleached comments section below. Don’t forget to subscribe to urbancrows.com via the freshly wiped subscription box at the top of my home page. I’ll be sure to mail you more geo-ordure from time to time.