Christmas in Canga

Well, if I'm to meet my goal of having a blog at least once a month, I'd better get cracking on December!

Life hasn't slowed down noticably in the last few weeks, although I suppose I could have made an effort.... whilst I was in Brisbane.  That was definitely a highlight, it had been nearly 2 years since I was last in Australia and exactly 5 since I was last home in Brisbane.  And I had a fantastic time catching up with people that I hadn't seen in ages, as well as just lazing around the pool, going for walks, reading a book etc.  And lots and lots of sleep.  Was a bit dissapointed in the weather though, apparently this was the first November in ages without a day over 30.

Then it was back to Mossley.  Trying to pack light for Brisbane in November, I'd just taken a light jacket - my Manchester summer jacket.  Yeah, not really thinking ahead there was I?  Because in three weeks Manchester had gone from bearable to frozen.... I could have skiied from the train station to my front door.  Still, all good, back home for a few days to meet my new (second) lodger, repack, catch up with a few friends and then it was off to Paris.

Paris in the snow was quite pretty, although the office is in the rather souless new (comparatively) business district of La Defense.  Absolutely freezing at night though with a cold breeze.  Still, I had a very nice time.

Then back to Canga again.  So, I lost and gained 40 degrees twice in 2 weeks!

Canga for Christmas was great fun.  There weren't very many people here, but it was a nice atmosphere anyway.  I went to my first ever Christmas midnight mass in the village, which was just awesome - the singing was superb. I  wish I'd taken a camera.  It wasn't a real church (they don't have one) but we had chairs outside someone's house.  The congragation was embarrassingly happy that we were there.

Then a game of cricket for xmas day itself (I'm still a bit sore, although I did manage to score a few runs.... we won't mention that other game of cricket going on at the moment) with the lighting pack running the beer fridge and the music.  All good :)

Now settling in to solve the week's problems before we do it all again for New Years!  A few more people coming back to camp this week, so it might be a little messy.  I've had my african shirt made up so I will have to make sure there's a camera this time.

What happened to October?

?Life's been a bit hectic lately and it seems to be getting harder and harder to post every month.  And this has been a particularly interesting month, not always in a good way.

As discussed last post, I spent my two weeks away from Canga being rather ill with a nasty flu type thing.  One of those weeks was working in the London office passing it on down there.  The wonderful thing was getting to catch up with Marge, the lady I met in Sicily under tragic circumstances after her husband passed away during the night in the apartment next to mine.

Then it was back to Canga again.  The first week was very sad, as two colleagues close to me passed away in two days.  This actually increased by 50% the number of people close to me in my life who have died, and this was the first time I'd seen them so close before their death.  The latter I was the last person he talked to.

On to cheerier subjects, here are some photos from a trip I took by helicopter to Kérouané last rotation.  The first shows the helicopter perched rather precariously on top of a mountain that we'd dropped on to to check out a radio tower.

 

While we were there, we found a little friend... the wildlife in this place is astounding sometimes, but this little scorpion is one to avoid I think. 

In Kérouané, once out of the Rio Tinto compound and exploring the town about, we found the river and with it the local river crossing service.  Apparently these guys have no jobs, and so they barge people from one side to the other as a way to both do the community a service and fill their days.  Lovely.

One of them kindly offered us a trip up and down the river.  It was even more spectacular and tranquil than it looks.

 

Then it was back to Canga, seen here from the air.

That was last rotation, this rotation as I said has been a bit different. No matter, out on Friday and off to Brisbane the following week! Can't wait to go home for the first time in 5 years.

home sick

I've just got back to Mossley after another stint in Guinea.  It's funny, the year is flying past but the time in Guinea is so busy that it feels like I've been away for ages.  I work about 70 hours a week but there's a lot of socialising and sport as well, so every day is packed.

There are people from all over the world in the camp.  Obviously Guineans, but also people from Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and other African countries, including a strong South African contingent (eg the helicopter pilots).  There are Canadians (Quebecois), the drilling company is Brazillian, the catering company half Lebanese and of course there are lots of French, some English and other Europeans.  The biggest expat group though is still the Australians, so you have the funny situation of some of local people picking up english with an aussie twang.

One Saturday night we decided to have a Brazillian night, or rather South American (recognising our Columbian colleagues).  After all, we could put all these guys to better use than running drill rigs!  Salsa lessons all round!!  (Or maybe samba, I don't know).  A great mix of people and a great night. 

But a downside to such a multicultural, travelling population - lots of new bugs to pick up.  So I've brought home some sort of cold from goodness knows where to infect the english with. 

Coming home this time had a few hiccups.  We normally take the minibus from the camp to a village called Beyla, where Rio has built an airport.  It's about an hour and a half due to the state of the roads and having to slow down for all the chickens, kids and so on in the little villages we go through.  This time all the people flying out said goodbye, hopped on the bus for the second flight of the day, got to the airport... to hear that the plane had broken down in Conakry. 

Well, better broken on the ground of course.  But still, back on the bus it was and back to camp.  We'd missed lunch so we decided to stop in Beyla for a quick trip to the local bar and something to eat.  No pictures unfortunately, but I went on the food hunting mission, and we ended up with some delicious fresh cooked street meat (beef, I think....).  On the way I stopped off with one of my Guinean colleagues at the local orphanage and had a lovely tour of the old colonial (french) buildings.

So back to camp before heading out again Saturday and spending a night in Conakry.  Of course, there's no flight out to Paris Saturday so a few of us were forced to spend the Sunday around the pool having a few beers at the hotel.  Tough, of course.  But you learn to put up with these sorts of things :)

Then out Sunday night and into Manchester Monday morning (5 degrees the pilot kindly informs us) - late because of fog at the airport, onto the train to Manchester, change for Stalybridge, change again for Mossley and finally walk through my door.  It was such a suprisingly beautiful day, fresh and clear, that I just dropped my bags and headed out over the hills....

Life in Canga

Gosh, it's September already (happy Father's Day Dad).  Where did August go?  Well it dissapeared under a big workload at Canga and a flying visit home with a quick side trip to Paris and Biarritz.

There's been a safety audit here on site which has taken up a big chunk of my time at work.  Now it's finally over and although still busy, there's time to breath at least.

Every day on camp except Sundays, we start at 7am with Flag.  There's a lovely solemn raising of the Guinean flag followed by the morning's announcements and/or safety topics.  7am is just a leeettle on the difficult side, but I'm pretty well adjusted now.

From there it's off to day's work, which is usually a mix of trying to get on top of some things interspersed with a thousand little things, often bizarre, which pop up during the day.  But one of the best things here is that everything is done for me - it's very hard going home and having to do my own laundry, cooking, cleaning etc!

Not that I was home for long last time, just a couple of days then off to a meeting in Paris.  While I was there I tried to go and vote at the Australian embassy but unfortunately I was a day late (they were shut on the Saturday).  Still, made for a great time cycling around the empty streets of Paris on a balmy August morning with a friend from Newcastle.  He pointed out that the embassy wasn't that difficult to find.... just look for the big poster advertising the outback.

And why were the streets of Paris all empty?  Well, everyone else was in Biarritz.  I had a few days spare and so I decided to go to the beach somewhere.  The Mediterrean really doesn't do much for me because the sea's just a giant bathtub and I prefer waves with my sand.  So I went down to the Atlantic. 

I wasn't the only person with that idea as you can see from the photo!  I hadn't really planned it at all... just jumped on a train and then noticed how many other people were getting on the same train!  I got to Biarritz, caught the bus into the tourist centre and found that there were exactly 0 rooms available.  Fortunately I found something perfectly adequate in the end so I didn't have to sleep on the beach.

And it certainly wasn't as bad as it looked.  Particularly in the morning I was able to find lovely stretches of beach and waves to play in.  The whole coastline was beautiful, and so I also spent hours walking.

I think that Biarritz was a favourite Edwardian era desitination for the Brits and you can tell from the architecture (ok, and also from all of the royally named hotels and streets!).

And then it was back to Guinea.  I finally had the chance to get out of the camp and up to Mt Oueleba, from which I took this photo of Pic de Fon.  Both mountains are going to be mined which is a bit of a pity because they are spectacularly beautiful.

Shopping

I'm back in Mossley for 2 weeks R&R, which haven't been the best two weeks as I picked up some sort of tummy bug on my way out of Conakry.  Still... time to catch up and get a few things done.

One of those things was to pick up some more clothes to wear on site, as we're still waiting for proper uniforms to come through.  So naturally I headed to Primark.

Primark is a place that seems to defy the laws of economics.  For example, I picked up several t-shirts for £1 each.  How do they grow the cotton, process it, ship it to the factory in China, make the t-shirt, ship it to the UK, stock it and sell it for one pound and still make money?  I don't know, but I'm still going to take advantage of it.

It's a massive store over 3 levels and so it's usually absolutely packed.  If I want to practice my French I just go there - the place is a revelation to the French girls who normally have to pay a fortune for clothes back home.  The queue for the changing rooms is generally about 50 m long.  Fortunately with prices like this you don't need to try anything on!  Last time I bought  jeans (£6) I simply picked up two different sizes and skipped the queues.  Well, at least the changing queue.... still had to face up to the payment queue.  I've seriously considered trying to pay someone at the front of the queue to swap places with me - the place is full of kids with little money (clearly, they queue up to try things on) so that could work.  Or bribing the security guards.  Or something.

Fortunately now it's summer holidays in Britain and so it wasn't too bad yesterday... in and out in no time with a huge bag of clothes for about £30.

Now let's contrast that to getting a visa to visit Nigeria, something I'm currently investigating.  Nigerian embassy in Canberra charges $20.  Nigerian Embassy in London charges £20.  Clearly that's one to add to my "it's way more expensive in the UK list".

Finally on the topic of weird pricing regimes - how come it is more expensive to fly Dubai-Brisbane than Paris-Dubai-Brisbane????

On the move again

So, it's back on the move again.  And this time even further south than Sicily.  When I left home, I started in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, then moved to Manchester, then spent 8 months in Sicilia, and now I'm working in Guinea.  Before you know it I'll have crossed the equator!  In fact, despite being a little north of the equator still, on clear night I could see the Southern Cross, larger and lower than I've ever seen it before.  It brought a wee lump to my throat.

Rio Tinto are trying to develop a new iron ore mine in south-eastern corner of the kidney bean that is Guinea, in West Africa.

At the moment they've just got a geology camp there, supporting the drill rigs that are taking samples to build up knowledge of the ore body.  The camp has grown out of what was once literally a camp, a few geologists in tents with shovels.  Then things looked promising in this area, so they decided to put down concrete pads for the tents, then build huts, and gradually the place grew into a conglomerate of odd buildings.  I've gone out to help sort out a few of the inevitable growing pains.

I spent several mornings trying to get decent photos of the spectacular sunrise coming up through the sea of mist rising from the valley.  Unfortunately as you can I'll never be much of a photographer.... these pictures don't go close to capturing the beauty.  I'll try harder next rotation..

Simandou is (sorry, was) an almost completely untouched part of the world, with a Class A forest reserve and the camp sits about half way up the mountain Pic de Fon, which you can see shrouded in mist in the background of this next picture. 

It also shows the main road through the camp, with that tell-tale red dirt so reminiscent of my time in the Pilbara.  I'm doing a 4 week on, 2 week off "FIFO" (fly in, fly out) rotation, and those 4 weeks on were not only hard work but also something of a health camp.  You can see in the distance the accommodation blocks and by this stage I've not yet made it down to my office.  By the time I went up and down to the mess for lunch, up to the rooms to get changed, down to the gym (way over the other side), back up for a shower, maybe back down for a drink at the bar, over to the mess for dinner.... I reckon I covered about 5 km a day!

Every day except for Sunday starts with Flag, where every one gathers round for the raising of the Guinean nation flag and a few announcements.  I'd love to take a photo of that but I was a bit worried about offending somebody, as the protocols are reasonably strict.  Still, maybe I'll work up the courage next time.

(This means that Sundays are a special kind of sleep-in bliss.... Flag is at 07:00).

This is more or less the view from my office, looking out over the Construction group's carpark.  I do like the way they've marked out the bays :). 

We're some 700 km from the capital city of Conakry, in one of the poorest countries in the world, so somethings are a little hard to come by.  Still, I hear it's much better than it was.  One of the geologists who has been there for years still can't quite believe the luxury of ice cream at dinner.  We have a couple of bars, two gyms, and plans for various other leisure facilities...

We are, however, lacking a lawnmower for the football field, meaning it gets cut with a whipper snipper.

Some nights, rather than go to the gym, I go for a walk up to the "Pit".  Obviously it's still a very intact mountain rather than  open cut mine at this stage, but we're getting ready early!

The walk up the hill takes (me) about half an hour and it's well worth it for the views and the tranquillity.  As you go up past the helicopters, the noise (not that much really) and lights of the camp recede behind you and all you hear are the chirping of some very, very big insects and very small birds and the breeze through the long grass. 

The valley down below is more wooded but there are still quite a few trees up the mountain.  Everything is lush green as we're at the start of the rainy season.  On this evening's stroll I managed to get absolutely soaking wet!  The lightning display nature put on for as the sun disappeared was well worth it though.

Coming back to the camp I tried once more to get a picture of the valley with limited success.

La Somme

As promised what seems like a very long time ago, I am going to describe my visit to the Australian 1st World War battlefields in the Somme, a region of France north of Paris that formed a major part of the Western Front.  The Battle of the Somme took place throughout 1916, and then again in 1918 when the Germans were finally pushed back to Belgium.

So, first thing in the morning, Greg, my friend from Australia, and I set off first towards Villers-Bretonneux.

Here there is the Franco-Australian Museum, in a school built with funds raised by Victorian school children after the war to help this village that the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) liberated.

We got there on a Monday and combined huge disappointment with it being closed (due to an unforeseen (by us) public holiday) with being very moved by the various dedications.   Across one of the school buildings is written in big letters "N'oublions jamais l'Australie" ["Do not forget Australia"].  Awwwww.

However, we made plans to go on first to the Champagne region, as described last post, and come back and do the Somme a bit more thoroughly later.

Along the way, we stopped off at Adelaide Cemetery, one of many across the area although maybe with a bit more information given its proximity to Victoria House. All of these are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who frankly must be pretty busy...

This particular cemetery is named after an Australian town but they all contain a mix of British, Canadian, South African, New Zealand and Indian graves (in roughly that order in terms of numbers).

This dedication describing the gift of land to the Australians by the French was particularly moving– I’m going to stop using the word moving here for fear of being repetitive... just assume that absolutely everything we came across was moving. It was just a very moving experience all round!

The graves in these photos are from the National Memorial site, but this is where we first came across the concept. All of the Commonwealth graves follow this format, with a symbol of the particularly force (eg the Canadian forces had a maple leaf I believe), a cross or a Jewish star of david, the battalion, name and some other inscription occasionally. (I think they’re so much nicer than the American style crosses, much more dignified).

I’ve also showed one headstone we saw an awful lot of... “A Soldier of the Great War”.... "An Australian Regiment".  Poor chap, they obviously couldn't even identify his battalian.


Back from sipping champers in Epernay, we started for the History of the Great War Museum in Péronne, also one of the Australian battlefield sites. But along the way Greg wanted to stop at Bullecourt on the advice of a friend.

Bizarrely it wasn’t mentioned at all in any of the literature we had picked up at the tourist office (Aussie specific and general) but it was on the way so I plugged it into the GPS (one day I shall write my ode to the GPS which will probably contain a line like “how the hell did I ever get by without you”).

And when we got there, lo and behold the evidence that Greg’s friend was on the money. Bullecourt was one of the worst and later one of the best battles for the Australians.

Driving through the town I noticed this street sign, so obviously a further detour was necessary.

Along the way we found the “Bullecourt Digger”, a memorial to what must have been one of the greatest cock-ups in Australian military history (including Gallipoli). Not all of the errors were British and so the West Riding division from England also got decimated. More information here... this site takes you through some of the battles and is quite good.

We did finally get to the Museum of the Great War in Péronne, housed in an old chateau which had quite a history of its own, located on the Somme river, was particularly good and so was the big cone of frites that we got on the way out of town afterwards.  As you can see, after days of glorious sunshine this day was suitably atmospheric... cold and grey.

The Australians broke the German line at the Battle of Péronne, one of the decisive actions of 1918 that eventually led to the Armistice.

Next (if I remember correctly, this blog has been a long time coming!) we went back towards Villers-Bretonneux to go to the Australian museum, fortunately open this time. The plan was to try and get to all of the museums or other sites before they closed (once bitten...) and then to the open sites.  However we stopped off along the way at Le Hamel, another tiny village destroyed in the war, now covered in poppies.

Here the Australians fought in 1918 and there is a well laid out set of panels describing the battle. I found the story of John Monash very interesting – it seems like there’s an excellent reason so many things in Australian are named after him. Clearly a competent individual to say the least.  It was here the Americans joined us, and so the battle date was set for

The panel in the picture tells the story of one soldier who didn’t come home (is it time to bring back the word “moving”?).

Then it was finally time to go the Australian museum in Victoria House. Only small but packed with stuff from the war, great information, pictures etc.

Including this one... a while ago I described my mirth on finding in Sicily a picture at a nature reserve of a character with a kangaroo on a leash (to mean don’t introduce non-native animals). I tried to explain to the locals that a) we don’t have kangaroos on leashes so I feel a bit undermined there! Point b) and who would take a kangaroo overseas and let it go might also be under threat... just imagine a whole heap of mascot roos being taken to France and then let go.... (I wonder if anyone’s ever tried to establish kangaroo populations overseas?).

After the museum, we went to the National War Memorial. There were a lot of memorials, I must say, but this one was THE memorial. Immense. The cemetery itself probably held more British and Canadian graves than Australian (everyone was left where they fell pretty much, although the French families were encouraged to come and collect their dead so you didn’t see much of them (and no Germans, not sure what happened to those guys... clearly not only do the victors get to write history, they also get to plant the memorials)).

This is where Anzac Day is celebrated every year, on the nearest Saturday because of course the French don’t have a national holiday. Interestingly, the second battle of Villers-Bretonneux was fought on the 25 April 1918.  The walls are carved with the dead of each battalion; fortunately my grandfather’s name is not amongst them or I wouldn’t be here today!  The various Australian battles are listed around the top.

You can climb up the inside and look over the now lush farmlands and imagine the hellish mud fields they were reduced to during the war. While you’re there you can read Paul Keating’s speech on the return of the Unknown Soldier to the War Memorial in Canberra and I challenge you to keep a dry eye.

This was the last of the Commonwealth memorials to be built, some time in the 30s I think (we’d had a few financial difficulties). The entire French cabinet and the president turned up for the inauguration apparently, and King George opened it, with his words being heard directly back in oz. Of course, this whole area was again under siege during the second world war. So next to the plaque describing the inauguration they’ve left some of the shelling damage.

The Battle of Pozières was one of the more horrendous for the Aussies in the long hard slog of 1916.

Not only is there another Australian memorial, but this battle was so entrenched into the minds of the soldiers that when the 1st Australian Division asked the troops where they should plant their own divisional memorial, the decision was unanimous.

On this site was a wooden windmill. Somehow this little mound was deemed of massive strategic importance.

Very close to Pozières (everything is very close here, about 1.5 million lives were lost in the Somme, an area of about 300 km2) was Moquet Farm where the battle continued. Here I’ve captured a nice descriptive map of the front line.  We are only about 2 km from Villers-Bretonneux and Le Hamel, so you can see just how many lives were lost for such a small area.

Not far from here is Thiepval, where the British Memorial is located (not nearly as nice as the Australian as I might say). It’s inscribed with tens of thousands of names of their missing.

We raced off to the Somme trenches museum at Albert , site of the first battle of the Somme. The whole museum is underground with lots of life sized displays of life in the trenches for each of the nationalities involved. And there were plenty of those. The story of the Mahgrebs (people from French speaking north Africa such as Algeria and Morocco) was particularly interesting, told to us by the curator as he rushed us out (we’d arrived about 5 minutes before closing time, not having kept to the overall plan of the day).

As the gloom was deepening for the day, we made our way to the final site on our schedule... the Newfoundland memorial. For reasons I don’t quite understand they fought separately to the other Canadians, and they decided that the best way to commemorate the war was to keep the site of their worst battle as it was pretty much.

After the war, the French people and their government wanted to put everything back the way it was just as quickly as possible. This is why a lot of the tiny villages like Bullecourt were rebuilt, even though there was absolutely nothing left. This is why you see everything perfectly restored. But one of the gentlemen who fought in this particularly horrible battle for Newfoundland went home, raised a lot of funds and back to France to buy the land over which he’d fought. Then he built a memorial, keeping all of the trenches in place.

I think it would be rather eerie to live in this house.

The moose at the top of the main memorial is a nice touch.

I’ve made quite a bit more effort with this post than normal, often I’ll just link to internet sites that show where I’ve been. But then this was all just too moving....

New title

So, once again this blog gets a new title as I'm sitting here late at night listening to the rain hammer down on my Manchester roof once more.  A new title because I'm back from Sicily with a new job in a new country with a new company.  Yep, it's goodbye SKM Manchester and hello Rio Tinto Simandou project in Guinea in french speaking west Africa.

I spent my last few days in Sicily getting around to see a few places that I hadn't seen before (they pack a lot in for such a little place!).  In this photo I've climbed down (and later up, much harder) a gorge at Avola to explore the pools and waterfalls at the bottom.  I even went for a quick dip as you can see from my wet hair.  Emphasis on the quick - it was freezing!

Then it was time to say goodbye to Sicilia and all the people at ISAB Energy that I had grown exceedingly fond of.  That was really hard - unlike most of my projects at SKM, this time I had been integrated into the client's team and made to feel a part of everything.  They made me feel very welcome even though I didn't speak any Italian at first (although I was pretty fluent by the end).  An 8 month (8 months!!) experience I won't forget.

Still, no rest for the wicked!  I made it home on Monday night and on Thursday a friend from Australia arrived for a visit when I happened to be on holiday between the old and new jobs.  He was keen to tour the Australian battlefield sites in the Somme in France, which happens to be where my grandfather fought.  I also happened to need to go back to speaking French instead of Italian.  When you use happen like that in three sentences in a row clearly you're going to be going to France!

The Somme was an intensely moving experience which I'll blog about later.  First though we went round the beautiful Champagne region east of Paris where I'd never been before.  We went touring in our black Audi A3 (which might impress some people... personally I would have been happy with the Ford Fiesta option!) and marvelled in the endless fields of lush wheat, the dense grape vines grown close the ground to protect them from frost (and to keep chiropractors in business during the picking season) and hundreds of kilometers (I exagerate not) of cellars used to store the most famous product of this region.

Because naturally any visit to Epernay in the Champagne region is imcomplete without a visit to the cellars of Moet and Chandon (there were many other winemakers' cellars we could have visited but who can resist a champagne inventing monk?).  There I learnt more about the process of making champagne than I had ever suspected existed.  Did you know that all important Bottle Turner must turn every bottle every day (left one day, right the next)?  Apparently a top Bottle Turner can Turn up to 50,000 Bottles a day.  And I bet you thought you were good at *your* job.

The weather in France was glorious... for a few days.  Then for our visit to the battlefields we dropped from 31 degrees to 11 in just one day and added some rain to boot.  Appropriately atmospheric though.

.... to be continued.

But in the meantime, the other big news of my life is that I've got a new computer!  Ok, that might not sound like the biggest deal ever, but because work has provided my computers for the last decade or so, the last computer I bought was a 486.  Aha.  That's like prehistoric my friends.  So I've spend the ENTIRE day (and a half) setting up the new beast.  Not that I won't get a new computer with the new company, however a big global mining company won't be quite as relaxed as my relatively small engineering consultancy when it comes to letting me do as I please with my computer.  And I'm the sort of person who needs absolute control of her own workspace (not to mention all of those slightly dubious activities (ok, downright illegal) that might take place with respect to certain movies and tv shows).