International Business
Apr
That’s Africa baby
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We were waiting in a Newmont conference room on site at the Ahafo mine. On the agenda: a briefing from Newmont’s General Manager in Ahafo Jay Bastian. He’s going to try and tell us what it’s like to run a place like this. The pressure for profitable production amid the wildly unpredictability that is Africa.
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Apr
Culture eats strategy for lunch
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It’s like a unknown, unmapped compound straight out the X Files. Newmont has built a community in the middle of Ghanaian nowhere for its western expat employees at Ahafo. A pristine suburbia with driveways, lawns, playgrounds, sidewalks, concrete curbs. Flower pots on porches.
And a community center in the middle of it. The gathering place for middle management to vent frustrations of Denver senior leadership, share stories of near mishaps, talk about home.
It was here, drinking beer and eating bar-b-queue, when a concept that’s been bouncing around in my head finally settled.
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Apr
He’s a big guy. Smart. Ghanaian friendliness exemplified. A presence barefaced in its proclamation: “Challenge me? Sure. But you better bring it.” Kwasi Boateng, Social Investment Manager at the project in Akyem.
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Apr
When you go to fancy-pants MBA school, you learn a lot of fancy-pants terms. It’s nice at first to throw them around and sound smart. Kind of justifies the expense of the degree.
But pretty soon you realize they aren’t that meaningful if (a) they really aren’t communicating anything other than you’re a snotty MBA with some fancy-pants terms, and (b) you really don’t know what it means in the first place.
And by means, I’m talking about the experience of driving through the barely-settled hills of Ghana and happening upon a working gold mine.
Towering processing machinery clustered together, the size of ten, maybe twelve city blocks. Caterpillar’s repair facility four stories high, two football fields long. Security check-points like NORAD. Vehicles zipping about in some presumably rational way, creating traffic like the town square of a small Midwestern town. Compounds of mess halls, pool parlors, the bar, and decent motel-like barracks.
And we haven’t even seen the mine. Or its haul trucks. Or drillers. Or excavators.
Maybe this is what my finance professor meant by Capital Intensive.
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Apr
Many Newmont employees are required to wear jumpsuits. Makes them easier to spot by the mining vehicles, and a little easier for security.
Apparently they’re a hot item. Counterfeit Newmont jumpsuits started popping up in the small towns around the Ahafo mine site.
Newmont folks tell me they have yet to see them used in any kind of fraudulent ways. Ghanaians are telling Newmont that they’re simply a status symbol. They signify you’re employed. It’s impressive around town.
“You see them on the streets at night in some of the villages,” one Newmont employee told me. “They’re all the rage.”
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Apr
Power trip
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Around Ahafo, 12-foot flag posts (like the kind you used to have on your bike only… well, taller) are attached to full sized, two-ton Chevy pick-ups so the haul trucks don’t run them over. Haul trucks, it should go without saying, always have the right away. You wait at intersections in the mine site for the “all-clear” over the two-way radio before proceeding. Haul trucks won’t stop.
The director of training at Ahafo tells me women Ghanaians make better haul truck drivers.
“They aren’t as arrogant. Not as attracted to the power. More responsible.”
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Apr
Here’s to the roughnecks
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I went to Ghana thinking I was open-minded about people and different cultures. I mean, I’m from the center of the universe (Boulder, Colorado). I’m married to someone from India. I listen to jazz music. I use a Mac. I have stubble. I’m hip. I’m down.
I figured one of the student outcomes of this trip would be a little mind-expansion that comes from interacting with a different culture. That it would be good for the students to learn and experience people who look and live very differently than they do.
I was wrong. I was the one needing a little of that educating.
Many Newmont expats come from raw materials and excavation industries. Oil and mining mostly. Rough guys with tough backgrounds. Blue collar women who know what it’s like to be tired after a day at work. Calluses. Cat calls.
Turns out I had a pretty firm definition of this type. And time and again, they redefine it for me here in Africa. I’ve had the most enlightening discussions about Africans, aid for Africa, and cultural differences here with the self-described Newmont Roughnecks. They’re honest about it all, and transparent. And more deep, thoughtful, and sophisticated than I myself have ever been.
I truly hope to raise a glass (or two) with them again someday.
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