Donovan Coetzee, MICROMINE Africa’s Geobank Database Management Specialist, joined by Denise Riddington and Fredrick McConville from MMG, on his way to the Lubumbashi in the DRC. It was a brisk 5-hour flight into Lubumbashi where testing and upgrades were scheduled to be done on their Geobank system for the week ahead.When they landed in the DRC, they were put into a holding room and were dispossessed of their passports while the custom officials did their checks, which is apparently the norm. Eventually Donovan was given his passport back, but they kept Denise and Fred’s passport as they use a system called Visa Volant, which is a system that generates your Visa while you are in the DRC.
From the airport, the team headed to the mine. On their way, one of the interesting sites were giant ant hills that have giant trees growing out of them, which the locals burn to make coals. With the team finally on site, the work could begin. Every day the team was up bright and early to begin the testing and upgrades to their Geobank system. Every morning there is a safety briefing and MMG chooses one employee to give an example of a dangerous situation experienced the day before and then they talk about the measures that are available to keep safe. The team went hiking in the evenings and the Sunday they were treated to a 13 km bike ride, outside the mine in the middle of the bush.
Once the work was completed, the team got back onto a plane and headed back to South Africa, from there Donovan said his goodbyes to Denise and Fred as they caught their connecting flight to Australia.
