Where Is Ron?
Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei: 4 January 2012 - 30 March 2012
Ron on the road to Geumpang, Indonesia, December 2010
Jakarta and Banda Aceh, 4-26 January Afton, Virginia, USA
7 January 2012Dear Family and Friends,
Ron has arrived safely in Jakarta. We left home at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday 4 January for the Charlottesville airport, where he had a 6:20 a.m. flight, and he arrived in Jakarta on Friday evening 6 January. His route was Charlottesville to Washington DC (40 minutes), DC to Tokyo (14 hours), Tokyo to Singapore (7.5 hours), Singapore to Jakarta (2 hours). I'm very happy to be at home and not doing that!
Love to all,
Ellen
Jakarta, Indonesia
7 January 2012Good Morning my dear,
Not sure what morning it is but ...
Arrived last night in Jakarta, got to my hotel and even though I called from Singapore and made reservation, the hotel was full, so went hunting to find an alternative. Slept till woken for breakfast (ha) and moved to my cheaper hotel. [Ellen's note: I think Ron's "ha" may refer to the fact that breakfast in Indonesian hotels was not something very worthwhile: a plain one-egg omelette, more like an egg pancake, two slices of toasted "factory" white bread, and coffee or tea] Spent the rest of the morning at the telephone company getting my netbook usb modem and smart phone set up so I would have communications.
Then I called my gold miner friend and found out he had returned to northern Sumatra because of some news he thought I would have heard about. [There was a 5.3 earthquake in Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra where the gold mines are, but Web news accounts say no reported damage; I sent news links to Ron] He wants to buy me a ticket to come to his gold mining town again. I am considering my options. As usual, plans get thrown out the window.
Long trip. Now I will need a couple of days to recover and adjust to the time change. I think Jakarta is 12 hours different, so the sleep cycle is reversed. I guess I will be staying up all hours of the morning.
At the moment I sitting in my favorite Chinese soup restaurant having my second bowl and waiting for my over 200 email messages to download. I can see the little green bar in the screen behind this one still moving across the slot. Not sure how fast the internet will be.
The trip so far has been relatively easy since I am on familiar ground. But I didn't sleep much on the way, so I may catch up over the next couple of days as I reorganize from airplane mode to land travel (after the next flight to where-ever).
You can pass the word I made it safely and if you see any news about Indonesia, Sumatra, gold that would make my friend return to Sumatra, please let me know.
Love and miss you,
Ron
10 January 2012
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
After one day in Jakarta, Ron has (typically) already revised his trip plan. He had expected to meet his gold miner friend, Nasrul, in Jakarta, but he had gone home to Medan and northwest Sumatra, presumably to check on potential earthquake damage (as far as I can tell, there was none). So, as Nasrul's guest, Ron is going to visit in Medan instead. Jakarta is on the western end of the island of Java, Medan is on the northwestern end of the island of Sumatra, which is west of Java - and Makassar, where Ron plans (he says) to go next, is on the southwest tip of the island of Sulawesi, which is east of both Java and Sumatra. He's going via the long route!
Since many cell phones, including ours, don't work at our house because of the surrounding mountains (and mine doesn't work in my office either, because the archives is 3/4 underground in a steel-shelled building), we don't have much opportunity to experiment with the many features of our phones at home. Hence, Ron's efforts to learn more on a rainy afternoon in Jakarta.
Love to all,
Ellen
10 January 2012
Jakarta, IndonesiaHello, my dear -
It has been raining today in Jakarta. Sometimes lightly allowing me to walk down to my favorite Chinese soup restaurant, where I had two bowls, the second with just broth, fat chewy noodles, garlic, spring onions, and a couple of what passes for lemons: small, maybe twice the size of a regular marble, green outside and orange inside and full of large green seeds. Ahaaa, yummy. I will miss this soup tomorrow in Medan.
For an afternoon outing on Sunday I rode the bus-way from Kota in the north to Blok M Mall in the south, the two ends of the bus-way, and had a grand tour of many of the sights along the way. It was not too bad getting on at Kota but the bus was crowded. Getting on at Blok M for the return trip in early evening was quite a different story. There were hundreds of people getting on buses leaving every few minutes. So for about 30 minutes I was immersed in a very dense crowd with people pressing against each other. The nice thing was they didn't overload the bus, so once on, everyone got a seat. The return trip after dark was very different with all the major intersections well lit up, making the large buildings, monuments and plants very beautiful.
I have stayed in Chinatown where I found the cheapest decent hotels in town. It has been interesting to just wander around the side streets with all the stalls and places people are living. People have been friendly and I have lingered along the way talking to people who were interested. A lot of people can speak some English, but we shortly run out of the English they know and of course I can't add any with my very limited Indonesian. But they are friendly and I find the whole experience to be a pleasure and adventure.
While it is hot and humid in Jakarta, the frequent rains keep the air cooler, so the heat has not been oppressive. [Note from Ellen: I think Ron is putting the best face on this - yesterday, in a short message, he said, "The heat and humidity are impressive, to be positive about it."]
With the rainy afternoon, I have been learning about how to use some of the features on the smart phone including sms messages, phone books, maps, google+ and gmail. I still feel like a idiot when I try to use some of the features, but am gradually leaning more. The whole process does not seem very intuitive.
I am trying to figure out how to send sms messages from the phone to the US, and for testing have been trying Sharon's number since she sent me a message before I left the states. So far it has failed. But I think it must be possible through my google+ account, which I can access on the phone. As a walkman the phone makes my nano redundant. I am also now learning how to make music playlists. Step by step. But a great rainy day activity.
Yesterday I bought my first tea bags, a lemon, and a bag of sugar, and have my first hot tea as I sit at my desk figuring out how to use the technology and write this message.
I still dislike the touch pad the Toshiba [Ron's netbook]. I find my cursor jumping around to strange places, windows are closed or opened, typed text just disappears, etc. I can turn off the touch pad but then must use the mouse, which for some functions is not good choice. I think it is the edges of the touch pad which I would like to turn off, but have only been able to reduce the size of the sensitive edges, if that makes any sense.
Tomorrow I fly to Medan to start the next adventure. Nasrul bought me a ticket and I had to send an sms message with my proper name and passport number which got me started in my technology learning. The message just didn't seem to be going anywhere. Then he called me on the phone to say he had received three copies.... Then I had to figure out how to retrieve his sms and go to the airline's web site and with a code he gave me in the sms to confirm the flight info. On top of this I thought I corrected my watch for the 12 hours difference, but somehow I had the wrong date, and so our conversations really got weird about tomorrow, day after, the date vs the day of the week - with the limited English, the poor quality of the connection, the interfering sounds etc. Sometimes it just gets funny.
Medan I think is the second largest city in Indonesia and next I will go to Makassar which I think is the third. Living in the country, I enjoy experiencing large cities, but I am looking forward to a small place.
I enjoyed Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes that I drew at the Dirty Santa Book Exchange. And I am still reading The Wandering Falcon on my phone using the Nook Reader application. It is clear and easy to read and I enjoy the convenience of having it in my pocket to pull out whenever there are a few minutes. Much easier to use and more convenient than the net book. On buses I can watch my progress on the map on the smart phone and know when to get off as well as reading a few pages along the way.
Maybe for my next trip I can leave the netbook, Nano and camera behind, as well as the attendant cables, batteries, charger, etc.
Love and miss you,
Ron
13 January 2012
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
After the last message, in which Ron was so pleased about learning to use and using his smartphone, I have to report that he lost it! He discovered it missing when he was emptying pockets etc to go through airport security for the flight from Jakarta to Medan. He doesn't know whether he lost it or it was stolen between his hotel and the airport.
So I, as his representative in Virginia, had the pleasure of calling the phone company to report it lost/stolen. The first person I talked to was not particularly helpful, saying, "No one can make calls from it because it won't work in Indonesia." True enough, but the person wouldn't put a stop on the number because "we have to talk to him." So I called again some hours later and talked to someone who was at least marginally more helpful. Again, he said that since the account is in Ron's name, Ron would have to talk to them in person in order for them to put a "suspend" on the number - and of course, Ron can't do that. However, this second guy did put a note in the file saying that the phone was lost/stolen, so if any charges do get made using it, we would not have to pay them. He looked at the number and there had been no activity in the previous 48 hours. Then, since Ron had requested it, I asked if he could give me the name and email address of someone Ron could communicate with about the options for purchasing a new phone (Ron had wondered about buying a replacement and having me FedEx it to him, which I was dubious about). The rep said he would have to ask someone about that, put me on hold, then came back after a while and said that no, they couldn't do that - Ron would have to speak to them directly. So there you have it - since the account is in Ron's name, they won't do these things unless they actually talk to him as the account holder - regardless of the fact that he is somewhere where he can't talk to them! Ah, bureaucracy!
If you have trouble following the time sequences in Ron's message (as I did), I think it is because it was written over a couple of days. I am happy and warm at home and, as Ron guesses in his message, am very glad not to have been along on this part of the trip!
Love to all,
Ellen
13 January 2012
Sigli, Sumatra, IndonesiaHello, my dear -
Yes, losing my phone is a bummer. This day was a travel day from Jakarta to Sigli, Aceh, in Northern Sumatra taking almost 24 hours. First losing my phone somewhere between the hotel and the security check at the airport where I had to empty my pocket, second the plane was an hour and a half late leaving Jakarta for Medan and arriving in Medan, having no phone I could not call Narsul, and when I found a public phone I could not understand him so he sent a text message to the lady running the phone service explaining he could not get me on my phone to tell me he was buying an air ticket to Silgi, so he didn't buy the ticket and I ended up taking the bus which didn't leave for a few hours and was a ride of 9 hours or so. So a travel day from h___. But I cannot say I was bored. I know you are very glad you were not with me.
I was taken from the airport to the bus station Nasrul specified in his message and was told the bus would not leave for 4 hours. Found an electrical outlet and set up charging my netbook and nano, and started this message. Some time later someone came and told me to get on bus now. So I quickly shut down and put all my cords away and got into a small mini van with about 10 passengers, sitting just inside on the right of the loading door, and then they filled the space between me and the front seat with boxes and bags up to the roof, including a small child's bike. I thought, "This is going to be a long cozy trip," but it lasted less than 15 minutes and we were dropped at a bus station with full size buses. While we were leaving earlier than I was told, I was then told the trip was longer than I was told. So information is fungible.
After getting settled in the bus and before it started, much to the delight of the guy next to me, I got my laptop and usb modem working and connected to google maps to look up Sigli, and yes, I could see it was going to be a long trip. I tried continuing to work on this message but gave up typing with the motion of the bus. I could read some and slept off and on.
Nasrul had a hotel room for us when I arrived early in the morning, around 6:30, and I slept about 3 hours. Turns out he was renting the room for a month.
We are going to see if we can get my old phone to work, replacing the charger your friend thought was bad and get a sim card. Tomorrow - as I understand the plans - we are going to Banda Aceh.
This morning my usb modem is not working, so I will have to get that solved also. Perhaps I have used up all the time I paid for? I tried while sitting in front of the hotel, eating some puffy bread with some jam-like ingredient in the middle, and dipping white bread into something green which came in a clear plastic cup about the size of a small yogurt cup.
We are now at the home of one of his friends who works with heat to separate carbon, gold and silver from what has come from his vat at his village near the gold mines. I think he also works for others doing the same thing. What I was seeing was a batch which had gone bad, I think because they ran out of fuel before it was finished cooking, and they were breaking up the result and picking out the silver balls, which after collecting they cooked with an acetylene torch flame from two tanks. What resulted was a silver shape that looked like a llama weighing 100 grams which he said was half silver and half gold. Then they started melting some copper and added it to some other material which I missed and now looked like small clusters of what looked gold colored metal. Next they started cooking this in a pot over a stove in the back yard, adding water and what I think is sulfuric acid. It is being cooked now and as I understand the process, will result in a liquid of silver and copper which will be poured off leaving the gold, This will take a couple of hours and in the mean time, lunch has arrived and I will pause to eat some fish and rice.
I now understand that this home is owned by a competitor at the gold mines who is doing the same process he is, so the guy here processes the carbon-gold-silver product which comes from the processing vats at the gold mines. Yesterday Nasrul brought a bag of product from his vats at Geumpang. They are now pouring into a large cast iron pot bags of white powder to mix with the bag of product from his car.
Two pottery round bowls have been prepared by coating the insides with the white powder (lime I think) and now they are adding the mixture to the pottery bowls. Next they will cook it for a couple of hours in sulfuric acid (I think) over a gasoline heater. This will produce a silvery colored slab of gold and silver. Next copper will be melted and then the slabs will be added to the melted copper and all turned into a liquid. When poured off into a pot of water there is a silvery golden copper colored lacy type metal produced. This is cooked in sulfuric acid and separates into a brown granulated stuff I saw in a pot which is the gold, and a mushy silvery substance which is the silver. The silver is added to a barrow of liquids (what??) for three days to recover the silver. The gold is melted and poured into a sort of mold, then cooled in water and brushed clean with soap and water. The piece of gold resulting weighed 90 grams and worth around 5K in US dollars.
As I understand our overall plan, tomorrow we will go to Banda Aceh then back to Sigli then to Geumpang then to Medan. So I will visit the mines again but this time we can drive in his car over an improved road! No five hour walk through the mud and rocks.
If you look at a google map you can find Banda Aceh, Sigli, and a place called something like Tangse which is like the name he uses for his email name: Tangse Valley. I think this is where the gold mines are. Geumpang is the village near the mines and where his first vat was located.
Using the satellite view on google maps, the land along the coast SE of Sigli appears quite different. At night I could see reflections and know there was a lot of water, but in the morning light the water appeared like rice paddies. So the fish and rice I just ate were locally grown and caught. John should appreciate me eating "local".
I have gradually gotten to know a little about the cast of characters I have been interacting with. There is a guy who has the same grandmother on their mother's side who is a doctor (medical surgeon) and he opened the first gold mine area. Nasrul is now making a partnership with him so he can go back to practicing medicine and Nasrul will have a mine producing his own rubble. Yesterday I was driven around the area by another guy, and we picked up a lady and a child, took her shopping, and then to a different house where I was introduced to her mother and father and another of her children. Turns out she was the doctor's sister who is married to the hotel manager or owner where Nasrul is renting a room for a month. Some fascinating family relationships as I figure them out.
I have gotten my old phone I bought through Hostel International fully charged and the sim card is now working. My computer modem needed to have more time added to it, but this area has a very, very slow connection so I am now writing from a cafe with wifi. So I think I will send this while I can.
Tomorrow we head to Banda Aceh by car.
Love and miss you,
Ron
16 January 2012
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
Ron is lounging at an island dive resort in an area he describes as completely rebuilt after the 2004 tsunami. He'd asked me to send him a photo of the ice formations on the waterfall of the ornamental pond he built last summer, but it hasn't been cold enough for ice formations. Any little bits of ice that form when the temperature goes below freezing at night melt quickly when the sun comes up because the pond is on the south side of the house.
The island resort is on Pulau Weh, an island off the northern tip of Sumatra; it sounds nice but not nice enough to make me wish I'd made the trip!
Love to all,
Ellen
16 January 2012
Pulau Weh, Sumatra, IndonesiaHello, my dear -
At the moment I have no Internet connection, but I will try answering a couple of messages while Nasrul is taking a nap. Updated: he came to me to check my compass for West and is now praying.
It is hard for me to imagine it freezing. I would rather come home to air conditioning. I am sitting in a restaurant overlooking the sea having tea with lime with my computer plugged into an outlet below my seat. Nice sounds of the waves crashing into the shore. I don't really know where I am but it is a beach on the other side of Sabang from Iboih Beach. Sabang is the largest city on Pulau Weh and how many people refer to this Island. The accommodations were built and owned by a German (English speaking) man and his Indonesian wife. He came here after the tsunami. His wife also speaks English and enjoys sudoku - she is a numbers person. I am reminded about Peter's wife wiping me out in a very fast game of Go.
A little background. Before the tsunami Aceh was fighting the central Government of Indonesia, probably still under the control of Sukarno. I am told the tsunami and Sukarno being replaced contributed to a lull in the fighting for Independence. For years it was forbidden for tourists to come here, but now it is possible. Banda Aceh is all new, everything was destroyed in the tsunami. Sharia Law is still the rule here and that makes the place quite different from many of the places I have traveled in Indonesia.
I think it would be enjoyable to spend a couple of weeks relaxing in Iboih Beach, but doing so is not in the cards. Nasrul has a whole crew of 10 people arriving in Banda Aceh tomorrow. This is a new crew to take over his cousin's mine in the new partnership. Again, his cousin started the first mine in Tangse and it is known to be a good mine and already 100 ft deep. Nasrul will manage the mine with his own crew he hired in Jakarta. The Doctor has arranged a bus to pick them up at the airport and take them to Sigli, where we will meet them tomorrow evening.
Last night we had another fish dinner at the same place we had fish for lunch. But this time the fish was much larger and we ate and ate and ate. So wonderful. I think I have had enough fish for a couple of days. But then there is dinner tonight.
I don't remember if I told you about renting a car. After getting off the ferry we went to a little open-air restaurant and had a cup of coffee. While we were there the group of 7 from Poland came in and were complaining about the price of the mini-bus to take them to Iboih Beach. There was a lot of talk which I could not understand between Nasrul and several of the guys hanging around the restaurant and then the group from Poland left with one of the guys. I gather the price was settled. While I am not sure about the numbers, they wanted something like equivalent to $5 each. Nasrul told me later he knew most of the guys because they were from Sigli and he had gone to school with some of them and they were trying to make some money off the tourists. I guess he brokered some kind of compromise. He also told me he had rented a car from one of the guys for about the same that the group was going to spend getting to Sigli [Note from Ellen - I think he may mean getting to Iboih, since Sigli is on the main island of Sumatra]. Except we would have the car for a couple of days and could go where we wished. Obviously this is quite a different view of traveling from my normal viewpoint.
Love and miss you. I would be nice to have you here with me by the sea eating fish with the cool evening breeze keeping the mosquitoes away. Quite idyllic.
Ron
23 January 2012
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
The Year of the Dragon - Happy New Year to all. This morning I went to the post office and bought some of the beautiful lunar new year dragon stamps issued today (see http://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2012/pb22328/html/info_022.htm for an image). They are for domestic 1st class postage, so only those of you in the US have a chance of seeing them on mail from me.
I got email from Ron on Friday 20 Jan saying he was going to the gold mine with Nasrul and would be out of touch (no cell phones, no internet) for a couple of days. Today I have his report of that trip, started on Saturday and continued at various times until they returned to Sigli today and he could send it. All I can say is that, cold and rainy though it may be here in Virginia, I am thankful to be enjoying my life at home! And I'm sure Ron is also glad I'm at home. For those of you who ask (incredulously) why he does these things, I have no answer, because I don't have a clue. Perhaps I don't have any sense of adventure - if so, so be it....
Love to all,
Ellen
To see photos of the road to the gold mine and of the gold recovery process, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of the first part of the gold processing, click on the thumbnail at the left.
21-23 January 2012 Sigli-Geumpang-Sigli, Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia
To see photos of the second part of the gold processing, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Hello, my dear -
This morning I was up early and after morning tea we left Sigli for Geumpang in Doc's car, with me in the front passenger seat and Nasrul in the back napping on and off. I could recognize a few of the sights from the same trip last year. Approaching Tangse the region is cooler, there are more mountains and it feels like a much higher elevation, and the vegetation is much more jungle-like. We stopped in Tangse at a store selling lots of gold chains, rings, and other gold jewelry, and right off it was a pleasure to recognize and greet Nasrul's father and mother who were standing in front of the store. I liked them from my visit last year. After a short while we continued on to Geumpang.
Arriving in Geumpang we went to a large two story cement home which seems to be Nasrul's, took my backpack upstairs and he locked it in his room, and before I could organize anything I was sent with one of his guys to get a pair of boots, sized to fit my feet. Last year I was supplied with a pair of boots a couple of sizes too large and had to wear all my socks and my Gore-tex booties to fill them up so they would stay on my feet while walking in mud up to and often over my ankles. I don't remember the stores as being as well stocked last year with supplies for the gold miners' camp. My impression is of a lot of change has taken place since I was here a year ago.
After being fitted with my new boots, and given a pair of new long very bright green socks to replace my black ones which I put into my shoulder bag, I was invited for a glass of hot tea at a small table while we waited for the next event to become clear to me. I pulled my sudoku book out and started a new game at around 11:30, which I noted on the page, and this gave me an approximate starting time for the next trip. I understood Nasrul to say the road was much better and we could drive to the gold mining camp. But like most of what I think I understand him to say, much of it is a wrong interpretation.
Tangse is not where the mines are located. There are somewhere to the east of Geumpang.
Next I was invited into the front passenger seat of a 1982 Toyota Land Cruiser, like a jeep, which I had watched some of his new crew load up with backpacks, bags, and supplies for the trip. After going a short distance with an unknown number of passengers in the back and a couple on the hood, we stopped at a fuel depot, which was not like a gas station, but had barrels of fuel sitting around. Large plastic containers of gasoline were being loaded on the front bumper and tied down. The seat I was sitting on was really a wooden box wide enough for two, and the lid was opened to load in various supplies. In front of me on the floor was a container (about 5 gallons) of fuel with a hose connected to it. This was the gas tank. I took some pictures of the crew and the fully loaded vehicle but of course could not take one when it was the most loaded because I was already in the vehicle. But my best guess was there were probably 14 or 15 people along with all the packs, supplies and containers of gasoline. There was one guy hanging off the side of the driver, me in the middle, Nasrul next to me and another guy hanging off the side next to him, two guys were sitting on the hood on the left side (the driver and steering wheel are on the right side here). At various points I tried to count the number of people in the back but was never sure how many there were, but am guessing 6 or 7.
After being fueled we started on the journey, passing very quickly the site where Nasrul set up the first vat for getting the gold and silver from the bags of sludge, the by-product produced by the gold mine after extracting the gold which I wrote about last year. [See http://personal.cfw.com/~renders/geumpang.html for the description of last year's trip.] Nasrul has bought the bags of sludge and is treating them in large vats with chemicals, carbon based. The chemicals bond with the gold and silver that the gold miners didn't recover. He said we would stop and visit on the way back. After we crossed the river I realized the road had not been improved, but instead may have deteriorated into an even worse condition from the year of use. But at least this time we were riding instead of walking through the mud and ruts and rocks. The Toyota was like an elephant going over terrain that makes our driveway look like a super highway. Only in movies have I seen anything like what I experienced, with the nose of the jeep in the air or pointing down, or almost on its side twisting, turning, bouncing but moving forward over terrain that I think Virginia goats would have difficulty crossing. My arms grew sore just trying to hang on. A couple of times everyone got out, and one time pushed from the side to get the jeep going again. A few times the guy on the front hood would get off and go across the bridges and then help direct the driver over the log bridge. There were a couple of river crossings I thought would be impossible, but the jeep climbed over some large rocks and plowed through some deep water.
Around 3:10 the jeep stopped and people got off while he turned the jeep around and moved it to the side pointing back the way we came. It was the end of the road for vehicles. But still about an hour and a half walk before reaching the gold miners' camp and getting to our location. The walk was first over some planks and logs and then right down the stream bed, trying to find places to step shallow enough for water to not go over the tops of my boots and solid enough to keep me from losing my boots in the mud. Finally we left the creek and went back on the path of logs and planks. The planks were laid across the path on supports underneath to make a sort of road for motorbikes. Sometimes the planks were end to end with plenty of mud on each side, and sometimes between planks. The width of the planks was most impressive, with some of them almost two feet wide, many 18 inches and those of at least a foot were commonplace. Perhaps three or four inches thick. There were also sections of just mud and smaller logs laid across the path, or some rocks to step on, but a couple of times I had to back track to get through on the other side of the path to avoid really deep mud or water. So this last stretch of walking was not just a nice walk in the woods. We finally got to the gold miners' camp, and then had to cross the camp to reach the other end where Doc's and Nasrul's operations were located. Nasrul pointed out to me that it was no longer Doc's but his, since he had taken over the operation with his own hired crew. Now Doc and his main crew leader, who was the driver of the jeep, would both sort of retire on a share of the profits from the mine. But Doc still has a second mine and crew to maintain.
Doc, a surgeon by trade, organized the first gold mine in this area, starting back in late 2008, with the actual mining and processing starting in early 2009. Doc developed two mines, is selling one to Nasrul and holding on to the other.
Crossing the camp involved a lot of creeks, deeper water, slippery rocks, mud, and logs, and in places where the path had vegetation it was impossible to see what was actually under the greenery. Much harder for me than the plank path. We reached Doc's site around 4:30 and I took a nap.
Nasrul's site with his vat operation is across a couple of good size creeks with the water getting over my boot on one occasion. So one of my socks is now drying on the clothes line.
Dinner was back in Doc's camp, and consisted of white rice and a mixture of cooked cucumbers and tomatoes with a broth ladled over white rice and a small dried salted fish as an extra. To my pleasant surprise the mixture was quite tasty.
At one point before dinner we were sitting on some large rocks in the river and I watched a couple of guys upstream fill up a large plastic container with water from the river with a smaller bucket. I also observed somebody bathing further up the river. Then a guy walked into the river and took a leak. So later I was commenting on my observations adding that the mercury was also in the water - and is this what they made my coffee from? There was a lot of laughter. At dinner I was told the water was hauled in and good. Later Nasrul explained that all the waste from the mines flows into another stream and the river at his location came from the mountains and has been protected. Maybe, but I still wonder about the water supply.
This evening I was given a tour of the vat area to watch the loading of the large vat. There is a large generator providing power to his camp, which includes lights, pumps, and other motors. Two guys are moving sandbags of sludge to a large container with a motor running a belt to turn some kind of mixer where the sludge and water are added and stirred up to flow down a trough into a rectangular box about 2 feet x 4 feet with sides about 10 inches high. Someone is using a hose and a scraper to stir the sludge around so that the water and the finer particles pass through a screen at the bottom of the box and flow down a tube to another motor that pumps the slurry up to the top of the tank, which may be 20 feet high or more. The larger pieces of material, roots I am told, perhaps rock, are scooped up and thrown into a large pile. When the vat is full chemicals will be added. I think sulfuric acid and perhaps carbon. After about 60 hours it will be emptied and the slurry will pass through a screen to catch the material that has bonded with the carbon. It is this material that is then burned with sulfuric acid in the next step. I will learn more tomorrow, but ever since we arrived, there has been a 55 gallon metal barrel sitting in the middle of the area with fire coming out of the top. It looks like granular rocky material. Later they put a cover on the barrel and I can still see flames coming out. There is a small fan, sort of like a large hair dryer, blowing air through a tube to the bottom of the barrel. Inside the barrel there is a layer of screen holding the mixture. I don't understand what is providing the combustion, but it keeps on burning for hours.
The plan. All day tomorrow, Sunday 22nd, we will spend in the camp seeing all the operations and maybe even the hole that is the gold mine. On Monday early we will return to Geumpang, pick up by backpack and return to Sigli, I think taking his wife and child. He is taking his family to Banda Aceh for a few days vacation and I will fly directly to Makassar from Banda Aceh. Directly is another one of the terms that I have to figure out. I know I will transfer in Medan and then Jakarta before getting to Makassar. But this might take place all in one day.
So enough for tonight. Will continue tomorrow to add to this since I will not be able to send it until we get back to Sigli.
I am now back in Sigli, having washed clothes, and am now sitting in a Wifi Cafe with a fairly good Internet connection. My USB modem doesn't connect with any speed at all here in Sigli. Every now and then I get a good connection for a few minutes.
We did hike up the mountain to see the gold mine Doc has sold to Nasrul, with Doc and his head guy owning a share of the profits. It was quite impressive. The mine that Nasrul bought is quite deep with side tunnels going even further under ground. I declined the offer to go down. Actually his new crew is still getting organized so no mining is actually happening at the moment. Doc's other mine is operating and down at the bottom I saw the work in progress.
In the afternoon it rained heavily for a couple of hours. Nasrul and Doc left me while they crossed the much higher creeks to go to dinner on the other side. I stayed and started writing this message. I was having trouble crossing the creeks before the rain. Deciding which rock is solid and which one will rock when I step on it, which one is rough and which one is slippery, just how deep is that sandy spot, etc, stuff they just absorb like goats. Watching me try to cross provided plenty of laughter. And with them trying to help, it even added to my lack of balance. Then there are those slippery logs....
I got a chance to go up to the top of the vats to look down and see that it was full of the bubbly watery mixture with large grey suds like bubbles around the edges pushing some foam over the edges. The bubbles were being generated from compressed air being piped over the top and down into the bottom of the vat from the compressor/generator running nearby. There is a cone at the bottom and three rings high, total height I would estimate 16-20 feet, and perhaps 8 feet across. Perhaps some mathematical person can figure out the number of gallons of slurry mixture in the vat.
After more than 60 hours, this mixture is drained and screened to produce what I saw cooking in a 55 gallon drum. Since everything that went up into the vat had been screened, the only content that would not pass through the screen when the vat is drained are the clumps of material where the carbon has bonded with the gold and silver. The mercury drops to the bottom of the cone, a level below the drain used to empty the vat. When the material was burned off in the vat, it produced maybe a gallon and a half when put into a strong plastic bag, including everything scrapped from the lid and barrel and off of the screen. This is what I saw being burned in Sigli.
Finally, after dark I borrowed a flashlight and made a long delayed visit to a shallow part of the river below the camp. Getting used to the squat Asian toilets has not been easy, especially without toilet paper. But a squat river was more of a challenge. You can believe that the experience reduced my intake of food.
The next morning we got up early and left around 7:15, arriving at the jeep about 8:45. After crossing the last river we visited the vat close to town on the site I saw being cleared last year. At the moment this vat is idle because there is no sludge available for processing. It comes from another mining site and is hauled to the vat site in a large truck. Perhaps in a few months there will be sludge available.
On the road again, on flatter and smoother road surface, the jeep breaks down. Nasrul and I start walking to town. After walking for a while we are met by his father who takes me to his home on a motorcycle. His father provides me a room, puts down a mat and a padded quilt and points to the bathroom. Typical, couple of nails on the walls to hang stuff, a large tiled box which holds water and a tile floor with a drain. But it had a western toilet! No paper, just the little bucket to use for water.
So, other than getting a plane ticket and catching a plane to Makassar, this is the end of the gold mining story for now. What an experience.
Love and miss you,
Your muddy Ron, now washed
Back to the Indonesia 2012 index.
| cfw.com |
| Questions? Send email to Ellen, ebouton | 
|
Last updated: 26 January 2012