It was sometimes for me not the easiest thing to associate the
bright and shiny aluminum pot sitting on the stove in the kitchen with the red earth that I often
watch heavy-duty equipment load onto trucks to be carted away to the alumina
plant.
One lesson in life from this is that the beginning of a thing may be
inglorious but the end product is far different after being processed or metamorphosis
takes place. So then bauxite may be far from the nice shiny pot, the parts used
on an airplane or the metal sheeting on the roof of the house but it was the beginning product. One could also
think of the caterpillar which is most times not described as being beautiful
as when compared to a butterfly but it is the caterpillar that becomes the
butterfly after metamorphosis takes place. There are lessons to be learned also from observing the process of mixing a cake as against buying a package of prepared cake mix. The ingredients and the delicious baked treat are so different.
A lesson that can be learned from this is that the reality of greatness residing in
our genes and/or that there is brilliance in our minds but it may take time to
be fully maximized or there may need to be the ideal circumstances under which
the mind will flourish.
The bauxite mining plant near where I grew up was located in natural geological
basin so it was an everyday occurrence while growing up to hear the heavy-duty
vehicles and equipment in the distance. It was also an easy thing to watch the heavy-duty
vehicles at work in the distance because I live on a hill. The alumina plant where the bauxite
was processed served as the only reliable timepiece I knew growing up because the
siren announcing time to begin work, break time and draw off time and could be
heard from many miles. My father leased land from the bauxite company to do
farming, the land was fertile and produced excellent crops and these same lands
were later mined to remove the bauxite. There were sometimes areas which had
deposits of bauxite but the bauxite was not in commercial quantity and were too
difficult to access the bauxite.
A lesson from this is that in life sometimes there are
choices to be made. It is the large commercial companies that have the money,
equipment and know how to turn the bauxite into aluminum. However the same land
that had deposits of bauxite near the surface was utilized for farming.
Bauxite to my father was essentially useless but farming was the means by which he supported his
family. Of course whenever he had to buy aluminum products then he had to pay
the price. I did read about a time when a farmer in another parish
planted crops in what appeared to be fertile earth but for some reason the
crops refused to flourish so he brought in a soil expert. The soil expert
eventually came to the conclusion that the crops failed because the bauxite
deposits were too close to the surface. This was bad news for the farmer but
good news for the bauxite mining industry.
A lesson that can be learned from this is that sometimes
with the best intentions we pursue the wrong thing and a lesson in knowing how to utilize what is available. It is also a lesson that
sometimes we possess things of value that will never be useful to us.
Bauxite is processed into alumina and the alumina smelted into
aluminum but Jamaica does not have the facility and capacity to do the
smelting. Even if a land owner should be told that there are deposits of
bauxite on his land it is of little comfort to him. The next to best thing that
he can do is sell the land to the bauxite mining company with the hope that he
will get a reasonable price. If he decide to keep his land it will
remain useless to him because there is no way that he can extract the bauxite.
A lesson that can be learned from this is that in life we need to know when to keep what we own and when it
may be prudent to dispose what we own.
Bauxite mining was something that went on around me
growing up. The bauxite was processed into alumina and then shipped overseas to
be smelted into aluminum. This is probably, for me, why there was a disconnect between
the bauxite the beginning product and aluminum the end product. Aluminum because of it strength, light weight and is malleable is widely utilized. Quite often we forget that it is the material that make the roof of the house. Aluminum is produce in sheets and then it is up to debate as to various uses. When I was growing up there were two notorious utensils that were made from aluminum and these were the cooking pot and the chamber pot. These two utensils were essentials but were looked on quite differently. the cooking pot was given the best treatment and had to be clean and shiny while the chamber pot while kept clean was handled with scorn.
A lesson from this is that there may be nothing wrong with what we have but the respect that we gain will be dependent on the use to which we put what we posses. In a similar way our talents and abilities can either bring us fame or we can utilize them in such a way as to us becoming objects of ridicule.
