From Mauritania to the IOM3 Library: 25 years of friendship and mining
A lifetime collection of mining books finds a new home in the IOM3 Library.
IOM3 President Christine Blackmore shares the story of a chance meeting in the Mauritanian desert that became a 25-year friendship.
The mining world can be surprisingly small. I first met Laurence Morris 25 years ago at the Guelb Moghrein copper-gold mine in Akjoujt, in the far reaches of the Mauritanian desert. I was there working as a CQA engineer on the construction of tailings storage facilities, while Laurence was Chief Engineer.
After a long day at the mine, we happened to be chatting at the mine bar when Laurence heard my South Staffordshire accent and said, 'I recognise that accent'. That was the start of it.
Despite meeting thousands of miles from home, we discovered that we had both been born in Hednesford within a mile of each other and had grown up around Cannock. We had even attended rival schools – Kingsmead for me and Calving Hill for Laurence – so there was plenty of reminiscing about home and our respective misspent youths.
Laurence’s family were living with him in Mauritania at the time and, whenever I returned from leave in the UK, I would bring him a copy of the Chase Post, Cannock’s local paper – a little piece of home in the middle of the desert.
As is often the way in mining, our careers took us around the world but continued to cross. Laurence moved on to Zambia and later took up a senior role in Mexico. When consultancy work arose there, he called on me, and I went on to work on a number of his projects across the country, including Dolores in the Sierra Madre and Cuernavaca.
Our friendship also became part of our IOM3 lives. When I was Chair of the former IOM3 Mining Technology Division, bringing Laurence onto the board was an easy decision and gave me the opportunity to introduce him to many of our mining colleagues in the UK.
Laurence is now retired after more than 50 years in mining, with a career that took him from the National Coal Board to senior roles across Canada, Panama, Mauritania, India, Tajikistan, Zambia, Australia and beyond. Retirement hasn’t stopped him contributing to the industry either; he continues to write about international mining, its history and its people, with some of his work appearing in Materials World.
This September, another part of Laurence’s mining story will come to IOM3. He is donating much of the specialist book collection accumulated over his long career to the IOM3 Library, in the hope that it will be useful to aspiring engineers and future generations of mining professionals.
Twenty-five years after that chance encounter in a bar in the Mauritanian desert, we still speak most days about mining, the environment and our families. Laurence now lives in Nicaragua and I’m back in Staffordshire, but whenever we are both in the UK, we still manage to meet for a meal and a beer or two.
It seems rather fitting that a friendship which began through mining all those years ago has continued through IOM3 – and that some of the knowledge Laurence gathered over a lifetime in the industry will now have a permanent home here too.
