Mountain out of a Mine Dump

This is where I grew up (and where I recently moved back to): Cape Town






This is where I should have moved to if I wanted a successful career as a hard core chemical engineer: Secunda








In my third year at varsity I turned down a bursary with a large petrochemical company purely because I could not see myself going to Secunda for two months of vac work, let alone moving there indefinitely. (Maybe a short-sighted decision, but let’s leave that for another post.)

I grew up in the city of Cape Town. The oldest city in South Africa, sometimes referred to as the Mother City, The Cape of Good Hope or The Cape of Storms. My family didn’t live in the fanciest of neighbourhoods but the beauty of living in Cape Town is that regardless of whether you live in the best or the worst neighbourhood you have some kind of view of the mountain, or the sea, or both. I lived about 40 minutes away from Table Mountain with the nearest beach less than 3 km away. Hiking up the mountain and lounging at the seaside were a regular part of my life and it never crossed my mind that one day that may change.

When I chose to study chemical engineering, I failed to realise one rather crucial detail: Chemical engineers do not work in pretty coastal cities like Cape Town. Real hard core chemical engineers work on mines or petrochemical plants. The biggest mines or petrochemical plants are in the middle of nowhere. And when you work on a mine or a petrochem plant, you also tend to live in the middle of nowhere in some odd little dorpie (dorp = town) with a name that ends in “burg”. Sasolburg, Rustenburg, Heidelburg, Middelburg. A dorpie that only exists because that particular mine or plant exists and the staff needs somewhere to live.

Me? I decided to opt for soft core chemical engineering in the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) industry. I started off by moving to Durban (a city on the east coast of South Africa), which at least had coastal appeal if not easy access to a mountain. A year later I weaned myself off the ocean and moved inland to Boksburg, an old mining town which is now also a general industrial area, just outside of Johannesburg. (I guess Johannesburg itself is an old mining town - the evidence being the mine dumps gracing the side of the M2 highway - but it's now grown into the largest city in SA.) Somewhere in between I visited a friend who was living in Secunda and working for a large petrochemical company. I drove there from Jo'burg with a fellow femgineer friend who had also opted out of hard core chem eng into FMCG. When we arrived there I felt like we were Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie leaving the big city for some hick town to film an episode of The Simple Life. The parking lot at any mall in Jo'burg was busier that the main street of this town. There was a flashing set of traffic lights that had been broken for so long it was one of the landmarks on the map my friend drew for us. Turn right at The Flashing Lights, no kidding. The locals sported 1980s farmer-style two-toned shirts. And instead of having a view of a mountain wherever you were, you had a view – and the stench - of the vast plant flaring away like a grotesque birthday cake.

Having said that, I suppose living in Boksburg - which I did for three years - was not much better. Two-toned shirts? Check! Mullets? Check! Mine dumps? Check, check, check! After some time I had started to fantasize that the mine dumps on the horizon were actually beautiful, majestic mountains. In fact, by the time I left Boksburg, I had to remind myself that they were mine dumps and not mountains. I guess my coastal brain had finally short-circuited after being too high above sea level for so long.

I wish I could say that all is now well and I spend my days mountain-gazing, sipping mocktails and breathing in sea air. But even though I’m living in Cape Town again I still spend most of my time working in Johannesburg right now.

And these days the mine dumps... just look like mine dumps.