The Green Wall

This area of Africa is very rich in copper and other minerals; it is one of the top 5 richest copper ore areas in the world and my company is mining just a small portion of it. Here are some pictures to help you see how much copper I am talking about.

As I drive out of base camp each day, heading to the mine, this is what I see. It is called the green wall and all of the green is copper waiting be be extracted. This "wall" is about 20 miles from the area that is being mined right now.
A closer look at the wall.
A closer look at one of the rocks from the wall.

Me at the green wall. Without getting into the mineralogy - look at all that copper. It is crazy! There is a lot of copper mining in Arizona, but you never see anything like this.

Washing windows

The company has hired a lot of Congolese people to work here in all sorts of jobs; mine jobs, mess halls, cleaning rooms, doing laundry, custosdial work, yard work, speed tracker (hiding in the bushes with a speed gun)...you get the idea. Sometimes as I drive to work I think that they created some jobs just so that people can have a job. For example, there are markers along the sides of the road out to the mine and today I saw a guy out washing them. There are hundreds of markers so I don't know if he will ever get to all of them, but at least he is working and making money. At the mine there are people who come and clean the lab each day. The way that they mop is quite unconventional. They pour water on the floor, squeegee it around and then wrap a towel around the squeegee to do the actual "mopping". It may not be as good as using a real mop, but it works pretty well. The "custodians" also clean the windows and outside of buildings every couple of weeks. Today one guy was outside cleaning the building (it is a metal con-ex) and the windows by getting soapy water on a broom, sweeping the wall or window and then throwing buckets of water onto the walls and window to rinse away the soap.

As I watched him working from out the window, I was reminded of when Beth, Brenda and I cleaned our windows in our apartment during college. We hadn't been living in our apartment very long when we noticed that the windows were very dirty. We had a split level apartment making the living room window about 10 or 12 feet above ground and we had no ladder so cleaning the window was a bit tricky. We taped together our broom and mop - very resourceful - and mopped the window as best we could (it didn't really get very clean). After the mopping we had a lot of soap on the window and no way to rinse it off as we had no hose. Once again we tried to be resourceful by filling a bucket water to throw on the window. But, even for the very buff Brenda, a bucket full of water was too heavy to throw up to a 10 foot high window. Instead we tired 1/4 full of water, which was perfect, and after a while we had the soap rinsed off the window. Now that the windows were cleanish, Brenda decided that she wanted to sweep our parking spots in the parking lot. Beth moved her car out of the way but Brenda didn't want to go into the house to get her keys nor did she want Beth or I to go and get them. Instead, she put her car in neutral and had Beth and I push it out of the parking spot. In the meantime, some of our neighbors saw us pushing the car and came over to see if we were having car trouble and needed some help. "No, no. We are just pushing it out of the way (because Brenda is too lazy to go inside and get her keys) so we can sweep the parking lot". So our neighbors just told us that they would move their cars so we could sweep their parking spots as well and walked away, probably thinking we were really dumb girls. It was just one in the many "brilliant" ideas we had while living in that apartment; bringing many laughs and good memories.
While watching the guy wash the windows today with a broom, etc. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the remembrance. It definitely improved my Monday. And now I hope you also got a small laugh, or at least a smile, from this story and it brightened your Monday.

Hills and Gardens

The Congolese people who live in this area do a lot of gardening. The landscape is kind of hilly but that is not a deterrent, the gardens are just planted on hills. I have never seen gardens on hills before, probably because I have always lived in desert type climates. The rainy season from October to May is what makes these gardens possible; I'm pretty sure a garden on a hill would never work if you had to irrigate. Since I got here in the dry season many of the plants were already dead, but I can tell that they grow corn, beans, peanuts, some melons or squash and leafy greens, bananas, mangos and papayas. We also have a lot of cucumbers. onion and tomatoes during our meals so I think they must grow around here as well. These are not the best pictures, but they do show the essence of hill gardens.

Carrying Things

This is one of my favorite things that I see each day in the Congo:

Women (sometimes men and children, but mostly women) walk around carrying things on their head with a baby on their back. I'm not really sure why, but I am quite fascinated by this. I think it's that I like to see how they've adapted to carrying large loads without the ease of cars, wagons or carts. I often wonder how they carry these loads without hurting their necks; I think it's all in maintaining great posture. Many times they carry large tubs full of things (like the pictures) or large canvas bags of crops or charcoal but I've also seen a load of sticks, a mattress or a purse. I also think the babies are so cute in the little pouches on their moms' backs. The mom uses a piece of cloth to hold the baby that is tied in front. So far I haven't gotten a picture of the load on the head and the baby on the back, but I hope to before I leave.

Return of Boy Bands

It takes about 25 minutes to drive out to the mine each day. That can become 25 very boring minutes with no radio or music. While I like to drive in silence once in a while, doing so twice a day six days a week would be too much.
Luckily there is a tape deck in the truck.
Unluckily I failed to bring any tapes with me.
Luckily Steve (our LIMS programmer) was here before me, bought some tapes and left them for me.
Luckily one of the tapes is Congolese so I get a taste of the music here.
Unluckily, or maybe luckily, the other tape is Backstreet Boys. That's right, they are making a comeback in the Congo.
When I leave I have to take one of the tapes with me to return to Steve. I'll let you decide which one that is :) I think I will actually take both tapes as I'm sure he wants BSB back.

Accommodations

My first 2 weeks in Africa I lived in H4, an apartment in Base Camp. It was like a studio apartment, a little more comfortable than a hotel would be.

Looking from the front door to the left I had a bureau, small couch and bed with a mosquito net. I used the mosquito net every night. I don't think that I mentioned this before, but I am right in the middle of malaria country. They spray here every few weeks so the mosquitoes aren't bad, but better safe then sorry. The door in the picture opened into the bathroom.
Looking straight in from the front door. From this view you can see a wall separating the kitchen/laundry room from the bedroom area.

Kitchen/laundry room. It was nice having a washer. Luckily I brought a clothes line so I could hang my clothes up to dry. Usually by morning they were not dry yet, but the cleaning people would take and iron all of the clothes that I left out drying.

This is a picture of the bathroom, it was pretty good sized. I had no hot water for the first 4 days, which made showering a little tough.
After 2 weeks I moved into Mark and Anna's house. (Mark is running the lab here that I am doing training for and Anna is his wife. I worked with Mark at the Central Lab for several years before he moved to Africa). They went on vacation so I am house sitting as well as dog sitting, gasp, and cat sitting, double gasp. For anyone who knows me well you know what the gasps are all about. I really do not like pets! Luckily the dogs are nice so I can tolerate them and the cat is shy and stays away from me. Mostly I just have to let the dogs in and out, pet them (only the dogs) and feed them. The great thing is that I am living in a house, which is so much more comfortable then a small studio apartment. Being in a house has allowed my time here to feel more normal; I am able to vacuum, dust, iron, do laundry, etc. It sounds funny that I am glad to be able to clean, but I am. I will still be living here for another week and possibly longer if there are no apartments open when they get back from vacation.

Looking from the pantry/store room into the dining room and kitchen. To the right is the front door.

To the left of the dinning room is the living room (this is looking at the doorway between the two room). Their house is decorated with an African theme, I think it is awesome.

Looking at the living room from the dining room.
To the right of the dinning room is a hallway to the bedrooms. On the left the doorways are(starting from the closest) office, guest room, master bedroom. At the end of the hallway is the toilet. On the right are the bathroom and another store room.
The bathroom. Behind the wall is the shower. There is no toilet in here, hence the toilet room at the end of the hallway.
The guest bedroom; this is where I am staying. There is no mosquito net, but no worries as long as I keep the AC running. Plus I haven't seen any mosquitoes in the house.

Wildlife in the DRC

Yep, that's about as wild as it gets here in the DRC. There are a lot of goats and chickens, some pigs, dogs, birds and a monkey. The pig I had to stop for right before I entered the mine gate, the monkey lives in base camp and likes to terrorize the dogs, and the goat was in the road on the way to Lubumbashi. The Congolese people mainly own goats and chickens; most are afraid of dogs so there are few wandering around. Mainly the dogs I have seen belong to the ex-patriots here in base camp. In my orientation I learned that there used to be rhinos, some kind of zebra, gorillas, and several other wild animals in the DRC however after years of civil wars and pouching all the animals were driven away and/or killed. This basically means that, unfortunetly, while in Africa I will most likely not see any of the big game. I do hope to see a snake though (from my truck). The Black Mamba and Green Mamba are both native to this area and very poisonous, hence why I would like to see one from the comfort of my truck.