excitement! adventure!

I've struck gold!  Okay, not really.  But I toured the processing plant last week, which was incredible.  It's a grown-up jungle gym, with chemicals and machinery.  It's real-to-life alchemy, turning rocks without visible gold into iridescent bubbles rich with minerals - gold and copper.  I loved it.  Learning an entirely new technical genre is amazing.  I wonder who and when someone pondered through the process... what it was like for him or her and if they experienced anything like the excitement that I do when I'm learning about it.

So, there we go.  Some real live mining stuff.  In case you weren't sure that I wasn't on safari in Africa, what with the mostly animal discussions.

Also, it's tough to be an advisor.  While I am part of a team here, I'm an outsider.  The core team, the heads of their departments, the management team... they comprise the serious get-it-done work.  When something goes wrong, I get out of the way.  They know how to fix it and they should be fixing it.  I advise, I coach, I listen, I help them work through what they are thinking.  But I can't jump in and do it.  That's been an adjustment.  I want to get my hands dirty, you know?

Also, we went to Mwanza this weekend.  Flying never gets old for me.  It's just fun to do something that you know you weren't made to do.  Lift off and soar.  I got some decent shots of Lake Victoria, being prepared this time around.  (Next time I'll get you all some shots of the mine.)  It was a little bit stormy, but the clouds made the lake look silky, glossy, and flat.  It was beautiful.  Also, I saw lightning from a plane, another first for me.

We met at the Gold Crest, which was a nice enough hotel.  Just nice enough though.  The impression it gives is of a nice hotel, but the details are a bit lost.  The wireless access didn't really work.  My bed was a queen-size mattress placed on a king-sized boxspring.  That sort of thing.  Almost a nice hotel.  Situated directly next to the loudest club in town.  You could hear it through the walls.  Quite the experience.  BUT the meeting we held together was very productive and the dinner that night was phenomenal.  A little restaurant on Lake Victoria with a great view and even better dessert (fried bananas and ice cream, yum).

Also in Mwanza, they parade newlyweds through the streets with horns and drums.  The couple stands in the bed of a decorated pickup (streamers, flowers) with a few trumpets or a drummer and they are driven around and around the circle in the center of Mwanza.  It's the greatest thing ever.  All activity has to stop because you can't hear yourself speak over the noise.  The attention too is fantastic.  Everyone looks and cheers.  It's a tradition I approve of... translated to my American way of life, it feels a lot like noisemakers and commotion.  Nakupenda (I love it)!

the wilds of Africa

I've made it to the mine site!

Now, I'm sure everyone wants to hear all about that, but sadly for you, I'm not totally prepared to write about that yet.  I've had a short tour of the site, but - being the workaholic I am - I have mostly seen the inside of my bedroom and the inside of my office, the conference room, the board room, my other office, and our soon-to-be-office-building (that's right, I've got a BUILDING. oh, and okay, it's not just mine... I share with Vitaliy.)

So, of course, there's the trip to the site, which was incredibly early, but also incredibly beautiful.  There's the tour and my first impressions to get to.  There are the things I hope to do on my trip and the hardships I've noticed (really, painfully bad internet connections - I am sorry not to have sent more emails in the past few days).  So much to talk about... but mostly...

THERE ARE ANIMALS.

For an industrial production site, this place is crawling with wildlife.  The landscaping is incredible, the sky is clear, everything is clean.  And there are animals everywhere - tiny little yellow birds that make nests on light tree limbs to keep their young safe from snakes, giant ugly maribou storks that skulk around the site all day, lizards and centipedes with shells like rolly polly bugs from home.  And those are just the ones you see every day!  Then there are packs of mongoose, which have stripes like zebra but act like prairie dogs.  I've also seen small groups of dick dicks, like miniature deer.  And silver foxes, running away like mists in the night.  My favorite though - BESIDES THE MONKEYS - were the peacocks that were outside my front doorway yesterday.  A whole flock of them.  They are solid too, like turkeys, and did you know that they fly?  Amazing.

But the worst news is that I'm awful at taking photos.  Truly.  I have a lot of pictures where you can't tell there's an animal in it at all.  And I have a number of others of blurs peeling off the edge of the frame, where the silly little thing is running away.  I am trying, I promise, but it's just so tough when these things don't sit still.  Crazy, wild Africa.