The new company that recently bought us out has introduced one of their safety initiatives called, “Stop and Think”.
The idea is that people stop and think about the job they are about to do and assess any hazards and risks and how they can mitigate them to ensure they’re working safely.

We have rolled out this program and there are big signs up all over the mine with this message.

The contractor’s project manager came into the office today feeling very pleased with himself that he is complying with the new safety initiative and said, and I quote:
“We were down in the pit and found a hazard. We found that the windrow is not high enough to be safe so we stopped the job and came to you to think”.

T.I.A.

We took an IT consultant down the pit for a tour and as I’ve mentioned before this Prado has no ground clearance and is not suitable for a pit car, so it got bogged again. Check out this guy trying to make it onto solid ground without sinking or getting his boots dirty, it’s better with sound.

Check out this mine site police guard. Not only is he rocking an Uzi but he also looks like Dave Chappelle.

I am sitting here waiting to go to the airport not sure if I’m going to be flying today or not.

Is there a scheduled flight….Yes.
Do I have a ticket on said flight….Yes.
What’s the problem…..This is the Congo.

Apparently yesterday the guys scheduled to fly didn’t get to because the SAA flight wouldn’t land. The reason behind that decision is that a cargo plane crashed into the runway.
Shortly after take off one of the engines caught fire and it turned around to come back and land. Unfortunately it came in too hot and and heavy and crashed into the runway bursting the tyres, crushing the landing gear and the fuselage on the tarmac.

So I’m sitting here wandering how much damage to the tarmac there is?
Will there be a back log of passengers?
Will I get on my flight if it lands?
If I don’t get on how much hassle will be it to try and re-book my 3 connecting flights.

I am trying to stay positive though and fingers crossed I’ll be out of here in no time. Before you know it I’ll be shooting dice in Vegas with a scotch in my hand.

Wish me luck.

I’ve just had to cancel the night shift mining for tonight. The strange part is that it’s something I’ve done a few times before over here.

I bet if you had a million guesses you wouldn’t be able to identify the root cause of me having to cancel the shift. Take two seconds and have a guess, then read on.

The root cause was a man pissed on a wall. That’s right, one guy pees on a wall and we shut down the mine for night shift. Here’s the sequence of events.

The guy is at a petrol station and needs to relieve himself. As is quite common over here he just does so in public without so much as a second thought. He did have the good sense to walk over and pee on a wall.

Unfortunately for him the wall happened to belong to a relative of the President. The Republican Guard (military) who protect the President were guarding this residence at the time and promptly arrested this guy.

I know a few guys in Australia that have been charged with urinating in public and it’s a fine of a couple of hundred bucks.

I know what you’re thinking; surely it can’t be that much in a third world country like the DRC. As it turns out the punishment is actually a fatal beating, which in any country seems a bit on the rough side.

So they beat this guy to death, intentionally or not I do not know. People weren’t really happy about it and proceeded to demonstrate on the scene. The military reacted by shooting to death two more people at which point you might consider this peeing on the wall event is getting a little bit out of hand. The last report was that an all-out riot had erupted with a fuel tanker torched and multiple roads being blocked.

With road blocks in place our buses delivering mine employees to and from their homes cannot get through. Employees going home can be dropped short and they can walk through the “riot” zone, however, the people coming in for night shift more than likely won’t bother.

Just to summarise, one man pees on a wall, 3 people die and we don’t operate the mine for night shift. What a sad and crazy place this is.

T.I.A.

Here’s a sobering reminder that you’re living and working in a third world country.
It’s an informational poster here at work that reminds people it’s not a good idea to defecate near their water source, just in case you didn’t know.

There’s also one in the bathrooms that says, “Wash your hands – Everybody’s doing it!!!”

Wow the new craze in personal hygiene. It’s disturbing to think these are the people preparing my meals every day. It makes you re-evaluate complaining when the kid at McDonalds takes your money with a gloved hand then makes a burger with the same gloves on. Dude that’s gross!
After watching a kitchen hand here leave the bathroom and not wash his hands, I think I’d rather eat the gloves from the McDonald’s kid’s hand than half the meals we get.

On a side note, when I woke up this morning there was no power again, which means no lights, no running water for a shower, no breakfast. Considering I have to get up and get ready in the dark every morning it proves somewhat of a challenge without power.

I could totally murder about 4 Macca’s cheeseburgers right now….nom nom nom.

Another Puff Adder found in the camp this week. These short fat little bastards are perfectly camouflaged to hide in the leaf litter that covers the ground here. They don’t move very quickly and you really only know about it when you step on one and it bites you.

The good news though, is that if you get tagged by one of these guys then you won’t suffer too long because you’ll be dead.

One less spitting cobra in the DRC.

Ohhhh that’s definitely a Cobra.

Well I’m fairly amped right now but I thought I’d write this down while I’m still pumped. I just saw one of the most amazing things since I’ve been in the Congo.

I was driving alongside our drainage channel for an inspection with a co-worker. Many of you familiar with my blog will remember it’s often under attack from the locals who are fond of cutting out sections of the plastic liner to make roofs for their huts.

As it’s the wet season I haven’t been out there in the week since I’ve been back for fear of getting bogged in the Prado, which really is a rubbish vehicle for use in these conditions as it’s gutless and has zero ground clearance.

Back in the seat of my usual 70 series landcruiser trayback I felt more comfortable attempting the drive and I’m glad I did. As we were cruising along inspecting the liner damage we came across something we hadn’t seen before. A snake was swimming along in the channel. As we’re on power restrictions at the moment, not all the dewatering bore pumps are running so the flow of water in the channel was quite low. The snake was just going with the flow, every now and then stopping to look at us. It was about 5ft long and jet black as you can see in the pictures, although there’s nothing for scale you’ll have to take my word for it about the size.

Not having seen too many snakes so far we weren’t sure what species it was and I sure as hell wasn’t getting out for a closer look. We were fairly confident it was either a black mamba or a spitting cobra, which are the most common snakes found around here.

After a few hundred metres of drifting along it came to rest just before one of the foot bridges the locals use to cross the channel to get between their villages. I was taking some pictures of the snake and didn’t see a local man on the other side of the channel behind the fence. I looked up and he was quite agitated. I quickly realised he thought I was taking pictures of him and he was none too happy about it. He was carrying a weed whacker, which is like a thin machete with the tip bent over at 90 degrees that the locals use to cut grass. He started waving it about and yelling in Swahili. Luckily there was a mine site police guard a few metres away who had been watching us and I motioned for him to tell the local man we were taking pictures of the snake and not him. As soon as he heard this he raced across the bridge and took off his gumboots and dropped everything he was carrying but his weed whacker. It turns out he spoke a little English after all because he managed to string together, “I kill and you pay me”.

Whoaaa hold on there mate, no no no don’t kill it, it’s ok we’re just looking. I don’t think he really cared what we thought, he was going to kill it anyway just thought we might give him some money to do it.

Despite our best efforts to dissuade him and the guard warning him, he has ventured over to the edge of the channel and the snake has swum over to him, which was pretty amazing and scary at the same time. The mine police guard with the AK47 backs up and gives us the hand signal that it’s a spitting cobra. Oh dear god this can’t be good.

The local man lashes out at the snake striking the water but misses the snake. Immediately the snake feels threatened and rears up in self-defence flattening out its neck as cobras are known to do. It spits venom at the man and he weaves and ducks to avoid getting spat in the eyes. The venom isn’t toxic on unbroken skin but can blind you if it gets in your eyes.

It was incredible how clearly we could see the venom shoot out and just how much there was. After the first failed attempt he takes off his cap and shields the side of his face and eyes then lashes out again in a flurry of whacks almost cutting the snake in half. He scoops it up and pulls it out of the water and walks over with a big smile on his face.

Hhmmm I wonder if he’s going to eat that?

As a rule of thumb the majority of Australian’s know that if you come across a snake, most of which are poisonous in Australia….. you leave it alone and you’re pretty safe. I personally wouldn’t go out of my way to try and chop the shit out of a spitting cobra. I guess there’s not the same respect for wildlife over here but then again this is the Congo.