African Adventure, Part 2 - To the Mines

The call came just three days after I had returned from Australia.

A business associate of my husband’s — one of the contacts he had built across years of working throughout Africa — had information on the coloured pieces I’d been asking about. He knew people at the mines. He could open doors.

We didn’t hesitate. Within days, we were on a flight.

Arriving in the dark

We were collected from the airport by our English-speaking guide and taken to a motel for the night — a shabby, functional place that felt a long way from anywhere. That evening we met with the man who would take us toward the mining regions and introduce us to the people who worked them.

I lay awake for a while that night, in a room that smelled of somewhere very foreign, knowing that what we had been building toward for months was now actually happening.

Into the interior

The only vehicles that move reliably through that part of Africa are the ancient Toyota Hiace vans — battered, rattling, and deeply uncomfortable even for short distances. We would be in one for many hours at a stretch, accompanied by our guide, a translator, and a driver who knew the tracks.

We drove through country that was vast and empty and extraordinary. Red dust tracks cutting through scrub and open plain, occasional roadside stops where local children gathered to stare at us with open curiosity — two Australian women, clearly very far from home.

The further we went, the more remote it became. Hours passed. The landscape did not change so much as deepen. I found myself thinking about all the invisible work that had brought us to this precise point in this precise place.

Meeting the miners

Appointments had been arranged ahead of our arrival — representatives from a number of mines, gathered at a meeting point that was itself hours from anything resembling a town. We sat across from these men and looked at what they’d brought.

Andaras are not what the mines are searching for. They never are. They are found in the course of other extraction — uncovered incidentally, often unrecognised for what they are by the miners who find them. They come to the surface because the earth is ready to release them.

When I saw the samples, I knew. That recognition I’d come to trust — the one that bypasses the thinking mind entirely — was immediate. I photographed everything and sent the images back the moment we found a connection. The confirmation came quickly: yes. These were real.

The final leg

With permission granted, we drove further — deeper into the interior, on dirt tracks through countryside that felt entirely untouched. And then the rain came.

A freak downpour turned the tracks to mud within minutes. The van couldn’t continue. There was a simple choice: turn back, or go on foot.

We went on foot.

Many hours later, we came back out the way we’d gone in — exhausted, muddy beyond describing, and completely certain we had done exactly what we were supposed to do.

Coming home

From the mining areas we were taken to a small rural airstrip and flown back toward the city. Meetings had been hastily arranged with government authorities — permits, paperwork, the formal machinery of export. We moved through it all in a kind of focused exhaustion.

Then we boarded another flight and headed back to Durban.

Satisfied, until we understood what was waiting for us.

The practical complexity of exporting from Africa — the people involved, the permits required, the patience demanded — was something we had underestimated entirely. There would be more waiting. More navigating. More trust required that what was meant to happen would, in time, happen.

Back in Durban, we returned to the ordinary rhythms of life and waited. And in the meantime, at the invisible level where Andaras do their most important work, things were already moving.

The African Andaras were on their way.

To understand about African Andaras  - read [African Andaras — The Power of the Bibis]