Micromine Travels across West Africa!

Micromine Training Consultant Kayleigh Cooper, from our Johannesburg Office, has recently had the opportunity to put on her travel boots and head across the western half of Africa. Over the past six months she has travelled to remote sites in the middle of the Sahara Desert, to the lush forests in Sierra Leone.

We had a quick catch up with her and this is what she had to say about her exciting experience:

I had feelings of slight trepidation before setting off to West Africa, mostly from reading second hand reports from articles and blogs about the “dangers” of this part of the world. Before even leaving South Africa, it seemed that organising flights to any one of those countries can be complicated, where travel time easily exceeds 24 hours just getting to site. I had become quite familiar with the travel clinic in Johannesburg, making sure I had updated my vaccinations (when needed) for each trip – I don’t like injections!

However, that being said, it has been amazing to see just how different (or similar) life is across Africa. A good sense of humour and attitude goes a long way and for every good experience there are a ton of complications – it’s very much West Africa.”

Security is top priority, in Burkina Faso I arrived at the airport to be greeted by military personnel who escorted me to the guest house. Armoured guards fully kitted out to take on any eventuality stayed with us while we travelled to site. As intimidating as they looked they were friendly enough to tell me all about their capital city Ouagadougou (their guns were an incentive to learn how to pronounce the capital properly 😊).

There was a language barrier when it came to training, as the official language is French, but this didn’t stop us and we achieved what we set out to accomplish. I had an agreement with the exploration geologists… I train them on Micromine and they teach me French, “travail en cours”.

Next, I was off to Mauritania, once again after a very long trip I landed in the Capital of Nouakchott. It didn’t end here, and I caught a charter flight to a site in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The flight back was cancelled due to a medical emergency and the charter plane was needed in another part of the country. This meant that I would have to go on a 4-hour drive through the desert, and man, that was such an experience! We came across caravans of wild camels and massive sand dunes that had swept across the roads we were travelling. Luckily, the mornings were still cool, so I was able to walk every morning (with the Exploration Manager) 2km to the exploration camp while watching the sun rise.

My recent stop has taken me to Sierra Leone. The site was situated right in the middle of the forest in a place called Monkey Mountain where its believed that it’s still inhabited by chimpanzees. This country has been devastated by two civil wars in recent history as well as being severely hit by the 2014 Ebola outbreak, but I have never met such friendly and welcoming people!

This trip had to be cut by a day to accommodate a national clean-up day (which happens every month). Everyone had to be on the streets on the Saturday to pick up litter for six hours. It didn’t help that they burned everything afterwards but it’s a great initiative. No one was allowed to travel on that day (guess who had to – me!), so with some quick thinking from the guys onsite and from our Business Development Manager Monray Schoeman, I was able to get back to Freetown with very few hiccups.