Fall out of bed, into the shower, throw on some clothes and tumble out of the trailer into a sandstorm for the 5:30am toolbox meeting.
This is when everyone on site is gathered for a daily briefing before heading into the field. I randomly walk up to one of the groups (drivers as it happens) and hang around, taking in the spectacle of 450 men in PPE all huddled around. Where was the camera again?
As soon as this is finished I head over to the car park with Steve to inspect one of the personnel trucks (1 seatbelt broken, no aircon, no lights, seats falling apart, loose tools in the gangway = nothing special :s ) and just supervise departure time. The Chinese should be here doing this but there is not one in sight. With 70-odd vehicles here, all leaving between 6 and 6:30, it's important to check everyone is ok on departure.
We then head over to the radio room to check the Vehicle Tracking System and hear all the drivers reporting in as they leave camp. The tracking system map only shows the main survey area, not the perimeter and Steve decides to spend the morning in with Mr Ma-the-dispatcher to ensure he actually notices when a car breaks down & gets stuck, unlike yesterday.
But first, we head over to the senior staff meeting. Various issues are discussed, usually met with a 'yesyes' from the Supervisor here. Alternatively, embarassed laughs followed by 'no can do'. But they do promise to fix the junior crew's showers.
Grab some breakfast in the senior mess (western side) then head off into the field with John R...now the real fun starts :)
Plan is to drive up North, check out the sabkha (salt lake), pass by the UXO guys clearing the minefield then head back down. In the afternoon I'll be heading out to the recorder truck (seismic data) with John B.
As we drive along, 2 things become clear: 1) the repeater REALLY isn't working well and this is going to be a pretty frustrating situation 2) good thing we're in a serious 4x4 cos we keep having to drive straight up escarpements to try and pick up radio signals
Anyway, a bit further down the road, John suddenly spots something (how??? Eagle Eye...or maybe it's the 22 years of army training) and gets the driver to drive straight off the track. It's a mine! Well, actually two of them, marked by the usual pile of stones.
They are obviously empty so we mark them out with some sticks then radio in for the UXO guys (Ronco) to come and pick them up.
Then off to the sabkha we go, with a quick detour to see some of the Italian defense positions (there are even still rusty cans left around their 'trenches') as well as the main cut-off French mine line between the two jebels (hills/escarpements). This has not been cleared yet except for a small section so we tread carefully and don't stray from the tracks.
Italian defenses
French minefield...follow the barbed wireFinally get to the Sabkha after passing the Turkish building company's base-they are building the new road (yellow top) through the area and just ploughing through the archaeology, including an old Turkish fort...well who cares after all, it's always the big bad oil companies who detroy the world, right?
The sabkha has a few small pools used by the locals to harvest the salt, which incidentally tastes really nice...should have brought a flask to collect some!
It is also clearly a challenge for seismic acquisition as it would be pretty difficult to drive a lot of vehicles regularly over the salt. Solution still to be determined...
On we go, then, to the exclusion zone through which safe lanes are being cleared by Ronco to be able to link the areas to the north and south of it. They can't do the whole thing because it would simply take too long - they already recovered several hundred mines in a very small area.
On the way there we come across the painting crew, whose job it is to paint the stones lining the exclusion zone white. Yesterday John spied on them and found them on their nth coffee break. When he showed himself they immediately sprang into action of course, then returned straight to their break as he hid himself away in his spyhole again. So they must have painted a good, well, 4 stones, yesterday. Anyway, they were at work when we arrived today so that was good-though it turned out that Mark from Ronco had found them all asleep a little while earlier and had given them a good telling off, so that might have had something to do with it.
By the way, most of the labourers here are from Chad and Sudan. The drivers etc are Libyans, supervisors/senior crew are Chinese and then there's us (the client), the mountaineers, the archaeologists and Ronco.
We head on and find Ronco at work on a new safe lane. They have cleared a good 300m already and are just having a break as we arrive, so summon us over. After signing a disclaimer and giving my blood group to the ambulance guy, we do just that and are greeted by the lads, led by Magnus - clearly from Sweden according to his accent. He kindly takes me along to the edge of the cleared zone and shows me their metal detectors: the main target are anti-tank mines, German Tellmines, French ones and Italian bar mines.
Ask a lot of questions, have a banter, then it's back off due south to camp.
Drive past a horde of camels driven by a touareg (could have been a National Geographic shot! yet I was too busy taking it all in to pull out the camera in time...) then across rocky terrain...puts the challenges of acquiring seismic out here into context...
The sandstorm is still blowing away and is rather worse on camp as there are objects there, causing the sand to scatter. We get back in time for lunch, a short 10 min nap (it's the wind, honest!) then it's off to the recorder...or so we think, until it transpires that the driving contractors and the Chinese are having a squabble as the Chinese are not supplying the drivers with engine oil (they are on low on the dipstick) or fixing the filter on the aircon. As a result, their boss in town tells them to standby...forget about going out again today then :(
John B runs me through the data files he gets from the recorder, the main challenges with the data out here (the operator!!) and the acquisition, then I head back to my room for a bit of web surfing...
Steve later drops by to take me on a tour of the camp and we inspect the junior toilets and showers (abysmal but better than before-they've even attempted to fix the leaks), their mess and even peek into one of the tents. Also check the generator, mechanic's workshop and geophone workshop. It becomes obvious to me that the Chinese just don't give a toss about the people working for them or anything they have signed up to in the contract. Worse still, our QCs are having to fight daily bitter battles just to get them to follow their own standards!! (which are rather lower than ours, it has to be said).
So, three conclusions about the Chinese operators: 1) they don't give a monkey's, 2) they don't know how to/don't want to/are hopeless at supervision, and 3) it is really easy to become very racist against them (am well on my way there, especially when I see the way they treat the Africans).
A fascinating day with so many things learnt: seismic acquisition can get very tricky in this kind of terrain, so I'll definitely make sure I check out terrain before planning any acquisition in the future; this area is such a major historic battleplace for WW2, a little like the Mareth line in Tunisia but on such a major scale...and I now know how to recognise a few mines and other ordnance; ex-army lads are really fun people to be around, if a little crazy ;); Chinese companies are a nightmare to work with and even worse to work for; we all navel-gaze and think we have class issues/need racial equality commissions and God knows what back home -> get real! This is where the real stuff happens. And this is where you learn about how tough life can get. And who the real bad guys are...
On that note, I'm off to bed as it's another early start tomorrow!
