I could do the BCL pit again!

ISAAC PINIELO
Correspondent | Wednesday September 22, 2010 00:00

 

Selibe Shaft is BCL's underground mine in Selibe-Phikwe and the only one in Botswana. The shaft is very deep and one cannot anticipate the magnitude of how deep it is until they travel down and further down and yet still further down.

Last Friday morning I was among the 30 or so local journalists who were invited by BCL for a tour of the mine. We were excited when we arrived at the mine premises located between east and south of Selibe-Phikwe.

Upon arrival, we met Maruping Mogae, who was introduced to us as the shaft manager of ore production. He was accompanied by public relations and communications officer - Shiellah Moribame, safety officer - Phineas Meloko, Superintendent Mining Contract - Boikaego Mokubung and Superintendent Project Ore Production , Edwin Tselaesele. We were led to the dressing room where we took off all our clothes and dressed in the mine's safety work wear, including overalls, mining helmets with torches, gloves, safety glasses, rubber boots and ear protectors.

A rescue pack was strapped to our waist belts and I felt a bit jittery when safety officer, Meloko explained to us how the rescue pack is used.

He told us that the pack had a respirator inside and that it is used in case a fire breaks up in the mineshaft or when there is not enough ventilation. I was however relieved when the safety officer assured us that none of that could happen.

We went on to enter the cage, as it is aptly called. Besides the prospect of being blown to bits, the cage was the scariest part. That is because we were truly packed in like rabbits and hurtling down at what seemed to me was the speed of sound, while water occasionally dripped on our helmeted heads.

As we descended down the vertical shaft through the cage in which we were crowded, the ear popped. The heat became progressively more intense and the humidity was stifling.

In fact, I am becoming short of breath now just thinking about it. I cannot stress enough how deep this is. Jokes were flying around amongst my colleagues about descending toward hell because no one would ever get closer. One colleague joked that he should have remained behind so that he would report in case of an accident.

As we finished our trip down the vertical mineshaft, we realised that the temperature is over 30 degrees Celsius and we were soaking wet from sweating.

After exiting the cage we walked for about five minutes before we hopped into the general man transport (GMT).

To me it looks more like a train, but ironically the manager who escorted us in the mine preferred to call it the GMT. We then embarked on a decline of 18 degrees down to the 950-metre level of the mineshaft.

We disembarked and got into the waiting place where Mogae explained to us that it is where the superintendent for the waiting place takes stock of the miners to see who is present and who is not.

He also explained that it is the planning area for the mineshaft in which they discuss safety issues.

That is not, unfortunately, where the trip ends. There we are a whopping 950metres below the surface of the Earth. Then we started a slow walk towards the working place, which is an active mining area.

To get to this area, we had to walk in rubber boots with the heavy rescue pack and a helmet strapped on through dank muddy tunnels. We had to slither down several slopes and snaked ourselves through the dark tunnels of the mineshaft.

We walked past the underground garage which is a service point for vehicles like dump trucks, vehicles for transporting officers, and so on. Here there are artisans and engineers who operate the vehicles and the Load, Haul and Dump (LHD).

As we moved further, we could see some miners chipping away, embedding, drilling, grinding and more. Here, one was forced to pluck in the ear protectors as the noise is irritatingly unbearable.

We finally reached the 1100-metre level where we saw the chair lift. This, according to Mogae, transports the miners to another level of the mineshaft. With its slow movement, he said, it enables one to climb on it while it moves.

We then backtracked to that point where we left the general man transport. It was not because we had explored all the corners of the mineshaft, but because most of us were already showing signs of weariness.

We head back to the cage, every one of us talking about how exciting the experience has been. It seems to most of us, it was an experience of a lifetime. Most of us had never been underground before.

I am exceptionally proud of myself for keeping it together for the entire four hours that we were down there. Although the experience was tiresome, I felt it would be worth doing it again sometime in the future.