Road trip to the Tonkilili Mine

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Today I have been to the Tonkilili Iron ore mine, we left early for a 4 hour drive up through the country through mountains, hills and local villages. Sierra Leone is lush green with palm trees everywhere but tinged with orange dust, just like Ghana, it also has amazing scenery. We passed many villages with men building mud huts or making bricks, women washing clothes in streams or cooking and children carrying water or playing.

I was snapping away with my camera and then “BANG” Charles (driver) had hit something he stopped and he said “I’m going back for that”, I will have that for my dinner, AND that ladies and gentlemen is why I take my own food to Sierra Leone! He had hit a hawk, it was an amazing bird, so huge and I felt so sorry for it, but couldn’t help feel that it was being respected by being eaten - apparently it will be roasted.

We arrived at the mines, I was told yesterday that I must wear a long sleeve shirt (35 degrees) and a safety hat, Hi Vis, safety goggles and safety shoes at all times, now as you know I am all for safety but this is taking it too far! I moaned about wearing the shirt, I had had to borrow a mans shirt and as you will see from the pictures its too big for me. Then we had a safety induction. Apparently we wear the long shirt and long pants (trousers not knickers – just incase you needed that clarifying) because of Champion Fly – sounds like something a northerner would come up with but apparently its really bad – so I stopped moaning… http://dermatology.cdlib.org/127/case_reports/paederus/qadir.html

Derek the safety man took me and Alpha (Freetown Safety man) onto the mine site, its a lot smaller than Newmont they are blasting small areas and collecting the dirt and sending it to China to be processed into Iron - which then becomes Iron bars, beds, fires etc. The views from the top were spectacular, like Alpha said, “its like we are on top of the world” we could look around us and just see lots of mountains.

We came off the mine and chatted to a service manager about some Health and safety issues then we went over to a see a dumper truck being repaired, an Expat called me up onto the truck and showed me the controls – I know you are all jealous, Alpha was!

We then left the mine site and headed for a local hotel, it looks like the one I got sick in in Ghana – so a little worried but sure I will be fine. I have no internet access so I am writing this ready to post the next day J.

Don’t read any further if you are an animal lover or are easily disgusted

While in Sierra Leone you can’t not at some point discuss the war, I never bring it up, they always do. For Charles he remembers the amputations and how awful it was to see but Alpha told me a story today that was dreadful “Do you have stray dogs in the UK?” I replied that we have some but not many as we have the RSPCA and dogs homes, “during the war many dogs got lost and became stray, the government had to kill them all after the war because they ate dead human flesh and got a taste for it”… hmmmm

I start a 36 hour journey home tommorow

Take care

Lisa

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