Down in a deep dark hole

I have been thinking for the past five days about how to write about my trip underground in the Nchanga copper mine. Not just how to write but with what energy. I’ve been busy, yes, and that accounts for some of it. But the experience of my visit down there was staggering. Now that I’ve begun I feel even more inadequate to the task. I had seen the magnitude of the open pit, that great and yielding laceration on the earth; I had seen the plant where the copper is attracted onto cathode plates out of an electrolytic acid bath and then palleted for sale. I had seen drill rigs at work, boring into the earth for hints of booty. I have never used the phrase I am about to use, so I mean it when I use it: Nothing could prepare me for what I saw last Thursday.

I booked myself in on a mine tour, as stated on this site I believe, at the Ndola Trade Fair. The mine was in Chingola, which is about 60 miles away from Ndola. My appointment was for 8 o’clock in the morning. Owing to various circumstances, getting there the night before was not a good option. Nor was leaving with the first bus at 6 AM, since there was a good chance I’d miss the appointment due to time lost transferring to another (unscheduled) bus in Kitwe. So I hired Fabian to drive me. He was late as usual, which made me fretful and angry, but that is a different story.

I got there on time-ish, cleared security, and joined the group I’d be going down with in the exhibit room. They were a group of junior workers at ZESCO, the Zambian electrical utility, and their managers. First we were briefed about the grade of the copper, the nature of the rock formations, the history of the mine, etc. What stood out most clearly was a model of the mine made out of spindly sections of color-coded plastic tubing joined together into something that resembled a neural network.

(To be continued shortly...)