It's Off To Go Work In A Gold Mine... Quiz

Answer: Corn

You would be waking up around 4AM inside a cramped, rectangular barrack constructed from corrugated iron sheets, rough timber, or even mud bricks topped with thatch. Being poorly insulated, it would be freezing in the winter and broiling in the summer. You would wake up on your pallet on the floor surrounded by dozens of other men.

Now you have to fortify yourself with food. You would fix mealie pap. It is a thick corn porridge. To fix it, you would boil a can of water over an open fire. Then you would add the white corn meal and salt and stir it for a while. Then you would let it sit and thicken until it's the right consistency. When you eat it, it would coat your stomach and provide the slow-burning energy required to keep your muscles moving for the next twelve grueling hours.

Answer: Candle

You are dressed in a thick, heavy flannel shirt and sturdy trousers, capped off with a pair of thick woolen socks to deal with the harsh temperature changes underground. You have on heavy leather boots with iron hobnails hammered into the soles. The floors of the mine shafts are slick with groundwater, mud, and jagged debris; without these gripping iron nails, slipping on a steep incline could easily mean a broken bone or worse. Lastly, you don a heavy canvas apron over your torso to shield your clothes and skin from flying rock shards.

You pick up your heavy mandrel pick for prying loose rock, along with a set of steel chisels and a heavy sledgehammer. These chisels are your primary means of carving into the earth as you will spend hours striking them to drill blasting holes into the quartz. However, probably the single most important piece of equipment you carry is your tallow candle. Without it, you are completely helpless. The deepest levels of the mines are absolutely pitch-black. A miner who loses his light cannot see the jagged low-hanging rock ceilings, cannot find his footing on slippery ledges, and cannot spot the warning signs of a shifting, unstable rock face about to collapse.

Answer: Ghosts

The pre-dawn darkness is being lit with coal fires and a few scattered electric arc lamps. All around you, hundreds of men are moving in a quiet, tense rhythm. The air is thick with mist and smoke and smells like sulfur. Towering over everything is the headgear. This is a massive, skeletal wooden and iron tower supporting the giant, spinning pulleys that drop the steel cages down into the earth. The ground shakes with the drumming of steam-powered air compressors and water pumps that keep the deep tunnels from flooding.

The mine runs 24/7 so as you wait to go in, the exhausted night shift emerges. The men stepping out look like phantoms. They are completely coated from head to toe in a white dust from the blasted quartz. That's why this time is known as the "Ghost Shift Exchange". Your group now steps into the very same cages they just vacated.

Answer: 90 degrees F (32 degrees C)

The iron gate slams shut, locking you and dozens of other miners shoulder-to-shoulder in near-total darkness. These early cages lacked walls and relied only on simple iron gates, so you had to make sure to keep your arms at your sides and your tools held vertically so you don't get smashed against the walls. You descend quickly with the air pressure changing rapidly.

When your ride stops, you exit into the station area, which is the huge tunnel carving into the rock. The environment is immediately overwhelming. You are 4,000 feet (1219 m) down in the earth. Because of that, the temperature hovers around a sweltering 90 degrees F (32 degrees C) with nearly 100% humidity all year round.

Answer: A song

You are now in a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel that follows the angled vein of the gold-bearing quartz reef. It is very hot and sweat is pouring off your body. You are working in a tight space where you often cannot even stand upright, forcing you to kneel or lie on your side. You are paired with another miner. You crouch in the dark blindly holding and twisting a steel chisel after every blow, while your partner swings an eight-pound, two-handed sledgehammer with full force, missing your hands by inches.

For years, miners had developed a highly sophisticated system of rhythmic, call-and-response work songs. One of these is the South African song known as shosholoza. Miners timed their physical movements exactly to the cadence of the song. The rhythmic tempo dictated when to lift, swing, and strike. By singing in perfect unison, you and your partner alleviate boredom, stave off severe psychological stress, and (most importantly) keep yourselves safe from mistimed hammer blows in the dark.

Answer: Water

This short break is a vital window for physical recovery, allowing you to briefly step away from the narrow tunnel to catch your breath and prepare for the second half of the day. You and your co-workers head to areas that are a bit wider and you can sit down and relax. You will stay stay in the dark to conserve using precious light.

You immediately reach for your canvas canteen. Because of the temperature, you have been sweating continuously since 5:30 AM. Taking long, deep gulps of water is absolutely mandatory to prevent your muscles from seizing up with severe cramps. There is no time to fix any kind of hot food as you must head back soon for more grinding labor.

Answer: Dynamite

You return to the rock face where you spent the morning drilling deep holes into the hard quartz reef. Now, you pack these holes with highly unstable dynamite sticks and insert a blasting cap connected to a slow-burning safety fuse. Once all the charges are set, the fuses are lit by candlelight, and everyone quickly retreats down the dark tunnels toward the main shaft station. You then wait to hear the loud BOOM which signifies the rock has been shattered.

As soon as the smoke clears slightly, you head right back into the tunnel to clear the newly shattered ore before the shift ends. Using heavy, flat-nosed iron muck shovels, you scoop up the jagged, heavy rock pieces.

Answer: A cart

Using a heavy muck shovel, you scoop up the jagged quartz ore into heavy iron cocopans. These are small, rugged mine carts sitting on narrow-gauge rails. Once a cart is packed to its maximum, you and your partner must put your shoulders against the iron of the cart and physically push it down the uneven tracks toward the main shaft station.

To prevent a catastrophic cave-in, you must install mine timbers. You lift massive logs of blue gum or acacia wood, wedging them tightly between the floor and the ceiling to act as artificial pillars. As you jam the wood into place, you can often hear the rock above groaning and popping as the pressure shifts.

Answer: Beer

Arriving at the station, you join hundreds of other exhausted miners waiting for the steel cage. When it arrives, you pack in shoulder-to-shoulder once again and ride it to the surface. If it's winter, the sudden drop in temperature makes your sweat-soaked clothes freeze instantly against your skin. You step out of the cage, hand in your tools, and join the mass of men walking back to the barracks of the camp.

You wash yourself off and partake of dinner with others around the campfires. It's a porridge again but this time vegetables are added or even cuts of meat (such as oxen). To wash down the meal, you will share mugs of umqombothi, which is a traditional, low-alcohol homebrewed beer made from corn and sorghum. It is thick, gritty, and sour, but it is packed with B-vitamins and serves as a painkiller for aching muscles.

Answer: Playing board games

You would join other miners and gather on the floor or the ground around a candle or a paraffin lamp to play games brought over by European miners or adapted from your own region. Morabaraba was a popular board game and if you didn't have the board, you simply scratched it out in the dirt. If you wanted to contact home, you could get a scribe to write a letter for you since, more than likely, you are illiterate.

By 7:00 PM, most men like yourself retreat inside the cramped iron barracks to escape the biting night cold. You wrap yourself tightly in a couple of heavy woolen blankets and lie down on your woven grass mat. Even with the babble of voices around you, you fall asleep quickly and know you will start all of this over again the next day.