The world of the mining salesman.

I have been to Steelpoort, Lydenburg and Polokwane in one day. There are not too many other people out there who can claim that, and why the hell would they want to?
Remove the gold, and platinum from this region and my understanding of a reason for someone venture out into the North of JHB African savanna becomes and enigma, but then add naturalist tendencies (that little hippie gene in us all that at some stage lived in a dark cave and grunted) and reason returns. I must admit that Limpopo is quite beautiful.

Fast cars, high speed, pot hole dodging (in Afrikaans a slag-gat – death hole. On the road to Steelpoort they get to half a meter wide by a foot deep!), expert truck overtaking with phenomenal distance and speed perception. Laser and radar jammers. They are cunning, cool, argumentative, entertaining and dedicated. Come to Modikwa boet. We’ll show you how to sell a bolt!

So I build and engineer plants, a more in depth explanation would infringe upon a secrecy agreement, but these plants supply the means for miners to proceed into the depths of the earth without the fear of 30 ton blocks of rock crushing their skulls. So as to improve my understanding of what it is I actually do this for, I figured it paramount to climb into my mining helmet and boots and venture down into the cavernous mining world to watch one of the machines which requires about R15 every 5 minutes of my companies products as fuel for its work.

Down there its dark, the smell of Ammonia is thick and burns my eyes, I guess that’s from the blasting, there’s water everywhere with the sound of huge pumps buzzing to pump the water to the surface and keep that water level from rising. Please lord may the monkeys at Eskom not get excited and push the wrong button again, I could drown.
So the sales legends have me stand around down in the bowls of the earth, and watch the workings a bit. They do their song and dance, kiss some arse lay praise to the kings of Rugby, boerewors and sakkie jolling, swing a spanner tighten a bolt, shout some funnigalore. I take a photo count to ten, bobs your uncle I look up and the boys have sold 38k of a new product valued at R67 each. Perhaps this 30mins of work was worth that 4.5 hour drive, and slagggat created flat spots in my suspension. Tallihoe bitches. I am enlightened this has given me ideas. That machine is worth R10bar? What the fuck? Perhaps we could build it for 5 J. I need to start off home. Dodging those potholes in the dark will kill me.

So was up at 3am home at 5pm, 9 hours of driving, a had a near fatigue induced accident, despite the 3 red bulls and 2 coffees, a tub of ma Karolinas pad potjie curry (the tannies in Polokwane can cook!) 2 new friends and some good ideas. Modikwa and the Limpopo. Thanks for a good day. Not likely to be back soon though!