Amazing afternoon.

A few weeks ago I got to know Alain who told us about the difficult conditions under which the 2007 baseline survey was collected (see here). He also told us that he works in the natural resource business. I am intrigued by the latter and asked him whether I could join him to work one day; I did so last Monday afternoon.

CAMIKIN

We first went to Alain’s house in Kadutu; a large neighborhoud of Bukavu. After meeting his wife, whom he met thanks to the survey in 2007 (see here), we talked. In brief, Alain works for CAMIKIN, which is a cooperative of several thousand miners in Shabunda (one of Sud Kivu's territoire). Each week they send three planes filled with gold, casserite and coltan to Bukavu. Alain’s job is to sell this; often to foreigners. In contrast to BANRO, a big Canadian-based mining company who also operates in Shabundu, CAMIKIN’s miners use their hands and some spades to mine.

ISTM

After an hour we went to ISTM, one of the larger universities in Bukavu, to see Alain’s office. While Alain is actually an employee of ISTM he also works for CAMIKIN as the first job doesn’t earn him much. The big ISTM building is close to falling apart. That is, like most big buildings in Congo, it was build by the Belgiums and it hasn’t been maintained after independence. Interestingly, during our few minutes there, I met Vincent who worked for Simon and me over the summer. He is now professor at ISTM. It is a small world.

Market

The highlight of the day was to visit the market where the buying and selling of natural resources takes place. There are 152 of those markets in Bukavu. Unfortunately, it is not possible for an ‘mzungu’ (‘white man’ in Swahili) to walk in. Luckily, Alain is friends with Sud Kivu’s Speaker of the House; a very important chap here in Bukavu. With the three of us we visited the market where I saw piles of especially coltan and casserite, resources being cleaned and separated, and I talked with lots of people. After that we had dinner at the Speaker of the House’s place – ie big and over the top Congolese police protection – and we talked even more, also about Sud Kivu’s politics.

Gold and diamonds

We had one more appointment later that evening in Café Belvedere with the son of the Mwami (ie the king) of Shabunda. He had brought gold and diamonds with him. Just 10 grams of gold is already worth 437 dollar, and each of the small diamonds he had with him (and he had quite a few) was worth several hundreds of dollars. Although it was a bit shady, it was also interesting as I asked him many questions; also about the role of the mwami.

So, last Monday I got to know and experience a bit of Eastern Congo’s natural resource business, became best buddies with Sud Kivu’s Speaker of the House, and I got to see cassiterite, coltan, gold, amethiste, tourmaline, red ganet, red ligt, topaze, corindo ruby, corindo saphir, aquamarine, corindo, diamant, ruby, saphir, and emeraude. For an academic interested in natural resources and a stone freak since a very young age, this was yet another awesome experience!