Open Writing

After 12 months, management decided to close the small process plant at 66M and send the ore through to the No 4 process plant as this was more efficient and cost effective.

I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to No 4 plant and John M’s crap so put in a request to be transferred to Affenrucken, a remote and secluded outpost 120 kms up the coast.

Now as far as I’m aware no one had ever requested a transfer to Affenrucken as it was so far out of town and so isolated. Everyone tried to get a transfer away from Affenrucken. Anywhere. They were always short of workers there as the guys didn’t stay very long.

Word got out pretty quickly that there was this mad man who actually wanted to go to Affenrucken. John M thought this was a great idea and if I was crazy enough to want to go to Affenrucken then he would gladly oblige. So he accepted my request, and around November 1968 I moved out to Affenrucken. Another phase of my life was about to begin – possibly the best time I’ve ever had anywhere.

Affenrucken is situated on an ancient river watercourse, straddling each side of a wide riverbed. It was about a km inland from the coast. The kitchen, dining room and recreation room with a full-size billiard table, were on the northern side of the river and the men’s single quarters on the southern side. There were about 30 rooms and while I was there the quarters was always almost full. There was a footbridge crossing the river between the dining room and the single quarters.

Affenrucken means “monkey’s back” in German. It is supposedly named after the shape of a hill, but I could never figure out which hill as none of them (to me anyway) looked like a monkey’s back. Perhaps from the air?

Over the hill was a large single quarters for the 200 or so Ovambos who worked in the northern mining area.

The single quarters was shaped in a double “H” with a small courtyard and garden in the centre. A Block was the lower level and B Block was the upper level. The toilets and showers were in between the two levels, off the stairs. My room was 4B, which was on the upper level and the fourth room down from the rec room near the swimming pool.

The pool was at the eastern end and it was here where we all congregated during our free time and when the weather was good. The pool was heated and we used to swim in the middle of the night, often with steam coming off the water.

The food was generally very good, with full meals for breakfast, lunch and supper. We often used to have braais (bbq) on the weekends and used to request meat, bread, salads, etc, from the kitchen.

Our laundry was cleaned free of charge. We had a laundry bag with our name and room number on it and dirty laundry was collected on Mondays, taken to town, cleaned at the central laundry and returned on the Friday, neatly ironed and folded.
We were well looked after and had no complaints really. If one could put up with the isolation then it was a great place to be.

The process plant had an interesting roster. There were two 10 hour shifts – from midnight to 10.00 am and 2.00 pm to midnight. Each day the plant was shut down for four hours from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm for maintenance. This was when the mechanical and electrical guys did their stuff. While I was working in the screenshop we would check and replace any of the vibrating screen panels that were worn or needed repairing.

The plant used to shut down at midnight on Saturday and start up again at midnight Sunday night. So Sunday was a day off for relaxing. Once a month we would have what we called a long weekend and shut the plant on the Friday night at midnight. If you were lucky, you could finish night shift on Friday morning and not start work until Monday afternoon at 2.00 pm on day shift. Then you could head down to Cape Town and have a weekend away.

Mining worked the same roster so the whole mine site was quiet on the Sunday.

It was a good shift system and worked well and everyone seemed to like it.

I started working on shift for about six months and then moved to the screenshop when the handyman had to leave due to an unfortunate incident where he had punched an Ovambo labourer. The company tolerated many things but physical violence was a serious no-no. So he was fired and I took over as plant handyman. I ended up doing this for about five years.

During this time I only worked dayshift from 7.00 am to 5.00 pm, had my own bakkie and a gang of 20 Ovambos to do all the work of checking and replacing of the vibrating screens. I also checked all the conveyors and assisted the vulcanisers when they replaced or repaired the conveyor belts.

I was also on standby so that if there were any problems or breaking of the conveyor belts, I and my screenshop gang would be called out to do the repairs. This was often in the middle of the night and a conveyor belt would break on a regular basis and could take anything from 5 to 10 hours to repair.

I worked closely with the mechanical workshop and my busy period was when process plant shut down each day from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm. I had a big workshop with all the tools that I needed to do virtually any job and it came in handy when we wanted to build something.