This is the fun part of that visit, we went down into the mines. It felt weird.
First, we gathered around our guide in the meeting point. gave us a brief of what we'll see, then we got into a theater to watch a video about how gold has been discovered, and how Johannesburg became a city.After the movie, we went to the elevator place to go down, they gave us helmets and lights.
we went down 250m , It was very dark and cold, we've been told that there is another gold reef (layer of earth where gold existed too), and that reef is more than 1000m, thank you Allah , we didn't go down that far.
We watched a demonstration about digging into the wall, as per the picture below, they asked us to close our ears but still the sound was horrible.
These red lines are painted by the engineers to tell the workers, the boundaries and where to dig, and where are the targets
Here are where they used to store the dynamite, they keep it in a wooden box because it is not a conducting material.
when using the explosives, the rocks fall down through wooden tunnel, and fill a metal wagen waiting down, and when it's filled it's pushed by men on the railroad, I can not imagine how they can push a ton of rocks till the exit and pull it up .
This is the supervisor desk, he counts how many worker entered the mine , and how many got out, every man who enter the mine give the supervisor a stone, when they inted to make an explosion, and they all have to get out, every worker take a stone from the supervisor and go up or far away, if there are any stones left, it means someone is still inside, and not safe to fire the explosives. you can see some flyers on the wall, it's saftey warnings.
After the boooom, they wait untill the dust setlle down, and they makes it wet, because that dust is not good if breathing it , causes diseases.
usually if they make the explosion in a level they collect the rocks in a lower level, they throw the rocks though a wooden tunnel to fill the wagen in the picture on the left.
The wooden board, the guide is holding, is full of holes, and using a strip, connected to it a wooden stick that fits into the holes, when ever a wagon is full and ready to go, they move the stick to the next hole, by that they count how many wagons is filled that day, which is equal almost to one ton.
From the rocks in this wagon , they get 4 grams of gold only, that's why gold is expensive!!
This is first aid room , if someone is hurt, it will take long time and effort that he can not give to go up to the surface, this is their local clinic.
This the EMERGENCY EXIT sign, and they took us through it , because if the power went off, we will use this exit to go up to the surface.
Don't wonder, what is this? , this is the emergency exit, when the guide told us about the emergency exit I was shocked, he told us that they had to use it the week before, I spent the rest of the time praying to Allah to keep the power on for the elevator.
It's about 1400 stairs, and takes 2 hours to get to the surface, lol , It would take me more than that.
It was a once in life experience, I enjoyed it
