Sussing Sudan

[JohnM]

Day 7.




Day 6 camp and morning walk on day 7. Some green plants scattered about in areas where water had run to.

 

[JohnM]

And on to Station No. 6 on the Wadi Halfa-Khartoum railway. This was a key station back in the day because it had a good source of water. The station and the conical-roofed quarters for the railway workers are abandoned but there is still one train per month on the line. The adjacent small settlement now provides a provisioning source for the miners in the area.







General store and our lunch venue. Lunch was prepared by our crew but they were able to do so within the store to make things a little easier.



Then heading almost due S parallel to the railway line towards Lake Merowe, a dam on the Fourth Cataract of the Nile completed in 2008. On the way we encountered a solo nomad wandering through the desert with his camel. Astounding.



Sighting the far upper reaches of Lake Merowe on sunset and camp-time.



Lake Merowe is large but looks trivial compared with Lake Nasser.

 

[RooFlyer]

And I was relying on you to have the instant answer because it was quite bizarre to me at the time and now remains a gnawing puzzle .

if you can check the GPS co-ordinates from one of your pics and give it, I will do some more, er .. digging. A geological map will be instructive.

 

[RooFlyer]

Those railway scenes are reminiscent of places along the old 'Ghan! And the single nomad reminded me of a scene from Laurence of Arabia. Keep away from the wells!

Wonder if you could post some full size versions of some of the speccier pics?

 

[JohnM]

I don't have coordinates for the pics but talking roughly 21 deg S 32 deg E. The mining area seems quite extensive, at quite a few localities,with all we could see being fairly small-scale individual operations at a distance. There were no shaft heads or anything like that. It seemed to be all front-end loaders scratching the surface.

 

[JohnM]

Wonder if you could post some full size versions of some of the speccier pics?

The speccy pics of the pyramids and tombs are yet to come. Building to a finale (and it was good that the trip was structured that way.)

I'll make a note to include some full size.

 

[tgh]

Huge Gold Nuggets found Mining in Sudan - RareGoldNuggets.comraregoldnuggets.com/?p=1861

 

[RooFlyer]

Righto; found you.



Your co-ordinates are about to the left of the Px near the centre. Near enough to the several gold occurrences marked, either side of the railway Al though Px is 'undifferentiated basement', the red with gamma symbol is granite - with gold occurrences .

Veeeery interesting.

I'll have to round up my former Moroccan co-investors to see if they'd like to have a dabble in Sudan. Business trip to Sudan. I like it.

 

[JohnM]

Righto; found you.

View attachment 146514

Your co-ordinates are about to the left of the Px near the centre. Near enough to the several gold occurrences marked, either side of the railway Al though Px is 'undifferentiated basement', the red with gamma symbol is granite - with gold occurrences .

Veeeery interesting.

I'll have to round up my former Moroccan co-investors to see if they'd like to have a dabble in Sudan. Business trip to Sudan. I like it.

Right - now tell me about the type of deposit (ie. is it nuggets or eroded fragments from veins - which is what I may intuitively expect from gold in granite), why the mining method seems extensively surface-based, how they are separating the gold from the dirt, why there seemed to be no processing plants and why no obvious heavy-duty trucking out of the area (we didn't see any made roads - but that's not to say they weren't there)?

It appeared to be that our tourist activities (eg. overnight camps) had to be kept well clear of mining areas/tenements.

It's all rather confusing...

 

[drron]

The mining method suggests alluvial gold and the size of the pits suggest it is local miners not commercial gold mining.The other possibility is that is just an early exploration of a lease.Rooflyer may well disagree.

 

[RooFlyer]

The other possibility is that is just an early exploration of a lease.Rooflyer may well disagree.

No, I think that's a good possibility. Shallow pitting is a common tool to explore alluvial deposits, or even deposits in the weathering profile.

Gold dissolves surprisingly easily in the weathering profile, given enough time. It gets de-deposited in voids and layers = nuggets. Running water will flush them out into streams. Absent water, you have to go down and dig it out and if the nuggets are big enough, they should shake out the dirt without too much sophisticated equipment. But the distribution will be erratic, so you have to 'bulk sample' quite a bit to get onto it.

Have been having a bit of a net trawl and the industry in Sudan is at an interesting phase. Like many third world countries, for years the government kept a tight reign on the gold industry - essentially state owned. They produce a surprising amount of gold - the third most in Africa pa.

Now its opening up. As ever, the government realised that they don't have the money or expertise to explore or develop the resources they have. This has become more pressing since South Sudan got independence and took most of the petroleum resources! Indonesia went through this phase decades ago, same with Ghana, each developed very successful mining sectors with much employment and tax paid.

Since about 2014 they have been releasing 'concessions' to a variety of mobs, including the Chechnyans, Indians and others

 

[JohnM]

The mining method suggests alluvial gold and the size of the pits suggest it is local miners not commercial gold mining.The other possibility is that is just an early exploration of a lease.Rooflyer may well disagree.

I think that I can confidently say that it is not early exploration of a lease. By the accounts we were given, this has been going on for a while. And not only the locals. US sanctions on Sudan for being a 'sponsor of terrorism' has, arguably, opened up a huge vacuum that China is exploiting (not that they necessarily needed a vacuum...). Local miners need a lot of bucks to buy a Cat 988K FE loader (or maybe they were using Chinese knock-offs - we didn't get close enough to discriminate...)

My paternal family history is in the WA Goldfields, so I have a particular interest (I almost did geology - but I was warned about the company I would encounter ).

The mining seemed small-scale, yet it was not trivial, isolated or sporadic. I think that there's far more to this than meets the eye... I was frustrated at the time that we could not get closer to what was going on so I could better suss it out.

That frustration has now only increased....

 

[drron]

Though this reference says that until 2012 at least most gold produced in Sudan was from artisanal production particularly in northern Sudan.

Copper, Gold, and Silver.
—Artisanal miners accounted
for most of Sudan’s gold production. In 2012, national gold
exports increased to 46,133 kilograms (kg) from 23,739 kg
in 2011 and 6,049 kg in 2007. Most artisanal gold mining
operations were located in the northern part of the country.
Mining was becoming more expensive as near-surface deposits
were depleted (Bank of Sudan, 2012, p. 14; 2013b, p. 12;
Laessing, 2012a

https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/2012/myb3-2012-su.pdf

The major reason for Sudan's increase in Gold production is China.Though there was a crisis in 2015.
Gold fingered « Week In China

When China sent some UN peacekeepers to Sudan they came from the Chinese Army's Engineering Unit.Not too much of a leap to think quite a few dozers ended up there.
Interestingly the Chinese came to Sudan when Bill Clinton put an embargo on investment there.Trump has reversed this decision.It is expected to lead to increased gold production.
Will Sudan Become Africa’s Next Investment Hot Spot?

Sorry about the hijack.

 

[JohnM]

Though this reference says that until 2012 at least most gold produced in Sudan was from artisanal production particularly in northern Sudan.

https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/2012/myb3-2012-su.pdf

The major reason for Sudan's increase in Gold production is China.Though there was a crisis in 2015.
Gold fingered « Week In China

When China sent some UN peacekeepers to Sudan they came from the Chinese Army's Engineering Unit.Not too much of a leap to think quite a few dozers ended up there.
Interestingly the Chinese came to Sudan when Bill Clinton put an embargo on investment there.Trump has reversed this decision.It is expected to lead to increased gold production.
Will Sudan Become Africa’s Next Investment Hot Spot?

Sorry about the hijack.

No problem. I'd really like to get to the bottom of the production method (as opposed to the fact that Sudan produces a lot of gold), but there doesn't seem to be anything readily available that explains it. What I saw, albeit not as close-up as I would have liked, appeared very low-tech, relatively small-scale in that a mining area was made up of numerous small 'plants' and it was unlike anything I've previously seen.

 

[drron]

Reading those reports though the majority of gold produced in Sudan is small scale artisanal production particularly in the north so I am pretty sure that is what you saw.
The other fact is that possibly two thirds of Sudanese gold production is smuggled out of Sudan.Pretty much the same figure as the artisanal production.Very likely much of that is controlled by militias or other nefarious groups which would be a reason why you were kept away from those sites.

 

[tgh]

screening for nodules is probably the best option with no water.
Wonder how they sort through the screened material ?
Dry puddling for opal , we would nip the end off any likely piece with a pair of side cutters

 

[JohnM]

Day 8.



Dawn and we are under a pretty much due N-S flight lane and conditions are good for long contrails.



First order of business was to visit the small village of El Kab. With the filling of Merowe dam, many villages were inundated and the villagers forced to relocate. El Kab is in the upper reaches of the dam and narrowly avoided being flooded. The residents refused to move. However, their riverside farmland was inundated, so they turned to fishing as their main enterprise.

The water level was low when we visited.





Pressing on S, along the railway (even driving on it for a bit!) and power lines and gradually skirting around the W side of the lake towards our destination of Karima.



Fishermen laying a gill net across an inlet and then chasing fish into it by smacking the water with a long stick.

 

[JohnM]

Karima arrival late morning, and… The Nubian Rest House. Phwoar – talk about an oasis after a week or so in the wilderness!

Jebel Barkal, an historically socially significant flat-topped mountain lies just behind. The Rest House was built by an Italian woman who was a pioneer of tourism in Sudan in 2000. It is currently being added to.

The Italian Tourism Company is probably the pre-eminent DMC (destination management company) in Sudan and our tour was fundamentally one of their offerings.











The rooms had a front and back door.

 

[juddles]

Veeeery interesting.

I'll have to round up my former Moroccan co-investors to see if they'd like to have a dabble in Sudan. Business trip to Sudan. I like it.

It is indeed very interesting. Whenever you see heavy equipment (excavators/bucket loaders, etc) in a remote area of a third world country, gold is almost always the answer.

And Rooflyer, if you need an available alluvial mining expert, who just happens to enjoy being in remote coughholes, and who also loves the desert, I know just the guy!!

 

[JohnM]

In the afternoon, back into the vehicles for a visit to El-Kurru, a World Heritage-Listed necropolis of the Nubian royal family from the Kushite period (around 700-300 BCE). We arrived just as these girls were cutting across the site on their way home from school.

There are two main tombs. The first is that of a king and the other of his mother.












And a couple full-size for @RooFlyer. The tomb once flooded after it was opened, as can be seen on the walls.