Underground in a mine

We were a bit anxious, walking in a mine tunnel. We needed to do it. And we wanted to do it. Because we needed to see what a mine looks like.

Three Mountains learning advisors won a tender to make training materials about mineral traceability in mining from GIZ.  As many of the miners are not highly educated, we proposed to make a flipbook, a training tool that can be used offline, using images to hold a facilitated group discussion. But to be able to draw images, you need to know what to draw exactly.  So we needed to visit a mine.

This is always the best part of our work; we learn so much in every project we do, this time from the experts in mining.

On a sunny Thursday, Jean Damascene from GIZ invited us to visit a tin mine not so far from Kigali. We went with five people from our team, on a very dusty road, so we were relieved to see very nice office buildings at the mining site with a proper boardroom and coffee. The responsible people from the mine presented their tin mine and showed us drawings of how the mine tunnels are planned. The drawings look like tree branches at different heights in the hills.

Minerals at the site were already discovered in the 1920s. So the community around the mine have been in mining for a long time. They feel they are all miners. The place is not fenced because it is so big. All the official mine tunnels, from the licensed company, have real entrances with concrete support at the entrance and wooden and metal supports at the start of the tunnels. The mine employs many local people, but others dig illegally above the ground, not in tunnels, and sometimes the soil collapses. Very dangerous! The legal mine has a rescue team, and they go out to save the illegal miners!

After the presentation, the mine gave us safety gear to wear: vests, boots, helmets, lamps and even earplugs. When we walked to the first building, we immediately met the man with the tags: the independent mining inspector, responsible for the traceability of the minerals. All bags of minerals go through a lot of weighing, recording and tagging before transporting them to Malaysia, one of the five top tin smelters in the world. The inspector was very helpful and posed for pictures in front of the bags with his tags. Now we know exactly what the bags and the tags look like and how to draw them.

The exciting part was the underground mine. We walked through a tunnel and saw how they drill holes with big water-cooled drills and how they place explosives to blast the rocks. It is cold underground, with water dripping everywhere and pouring on you. We saw many emergency holes and narrow pathways that people would use in case of an emergency.

We visited all the big machines they use to break, separate, wash and dry the minerals. From a lot of soil and rocks, only a small portion is finally left.

Next to the mine, there is a mining school, a part of Rwanda Polytechnic. It turned out that Jean Damascene, was the former director of the mining school. All his old colleagues came to greet him. We toured the school and attempted to identify different minerals from samples. At the school, you can also learn how to cut gemstones for jewellery! Now, we all want to study at the mining school!

It was a great visit!

Gerry van der Hulst