A Miner's Dream
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2005
1
11
42
Trip End
Nov 17, 2005
Mapatizya,
Zambia
Thursday, June 30, 2005
In a dilapidated old Land-Rover, Jeff Chungu, a scholarly, soft-spoken mine manager, takes me on a tour of the Mapatizya Mine, owned by Kariba Minerals, a joint Zambian-British firm. We rock back and forth along the dirt access roads that take workers and bulldozers into the bush and down into the mines.
Since amethyst veins can run from a few centimetres to dozens of metres below the surface, the stones are extracted from open-pit mines rather than shafts. Jeff takes me to one of Kariba's most productive pits, in which veins of low and medium-grade amethyst are exposed in great slashes of light purple on the walls and floor of the 30-metre deep mine. Guards armed with billy-clubs eye us suspiciously from the top of the pit.
The tour continues past washing sheds, where the raw amethyst is rinsed and sorted, and conveyed to the knocking sheds, where dozens of workers on two shifts break surplus and colourless crystal off the more valuable deep purple stone. The better stones are carefully knocked by skilled workers and go on to be sawed and polished by teams of female labourers. Dozens of large flour sacks lean against the polishing shed, filled to bursting with the finished, fingernail-sized stones.
At the end of each shift the workers line up for a pat-down from the shift supervisor. Though amethyst is far less valuable than emeralds or diamonds there is still a market for illegal gemstones, and so the security check. Men remove their caps and shoes, turn out their pockets. Women are searched by their female superiors, though Jeff says cases of theft among women workers are much rarer than among men. In the time he's been manager of Mapatizya there have been no incidents of theft among the women, he says.
But Jeff's been on the job only three months, and still seems a little unsure of himself. Though it seems efficient, the Mapatizya Mine is a big operation, and with no human resource department the manager is almost alone in handling the over 500 people employed to produce some 15 tonnes of amethyst a month. Right now Jeff's trying to fill three separate orders from international gemstone interests, and shakes his head as he looks over the day's production report.
Next door to Kariba is the 106 hectare mine owned by JACE Enterprises. The name is an acronym, standing for Julian, Andrew, Case and Eric, the middle names of myself, my brother Nicholas (C) and half-brothers Clifford (A) and Ian (E). It's a sentimental name for a mine, but that's just the kind of man Eric Wightman is. This is my father's mine, his dream and sometimes nightmare. He's owned--and talked about--this place for twenty years, and I'm the first of his sons to visit it.
Unlike the Kariba holdings JACE is still in infancy, waiting for money to roll in to begin major operations. For the first time in two decades it looks like my father will finally get his due, as the final paperwork is going through on a loan from the European Union.
Day-to-day operations at JACE are handled by my uncle, Charlie, and two of his sons, the youngest of whom, Robert, shows me around. We move about on foot, surveying the small pits and exploratory digging around the border of the Kariba plot. Everyone involved with my dad's mine, including Kariba officials, insist that there's a wealth of material in JACE, but without proper funding the stones will stay where they are.
While my dad and uncle wait for the loan they busy themselves with community development projects. Funded by Kariba Minerals and organized largely by my father and Charlie, the local health clinic is being renovated, a police post has been put up and plans have been drafted for housing the police officers. At times it seems like my dad and his brother are working on a model train set rather than a mine, as they pore over the details of building plans and discuss materials.
The three of us tour the various work sites with mine manager Chungu and a general manager of Kariba Minerals, Lyapa Mansa. The clinic is temporarily closed as workers tear down walls, reinforce the foundation and prepare cement and cinder blocks to expand the building. Hundreds of 50kg bags of food aid from the US and Finland crowd the main room.
Work stops briefly as a truckload of villagers pass through the site on the way to the local cemetery. Two children from the nearby village had died the day before, their mothers now sitting in the cab of the truck, wailing and weeping, while mourners sing a funerary hymn in the back. I take off my cap and watch the procession pass slowly into the bush.
(Later, when we're on the way to inspect a brick-making business I hear more wailing coming from somewhere in the village. "They're going to the wailing house," says Charlie, reminding me that local funeral customs are roughly the opposite of those in the west. "They have to keep wailing," he explains. "Otherwise they don't get to eat.")
Down the road from the clinic, a grassy lot beside the police post is the future site of police housing, and a local workman with some experience reading blueprints looks uncertainly at the building plans. I wander off with Charlie to inspect the police station, a three-room building complete with male and female holding cells. I stare through a gap forced into the metal sheeting on the men's cell and am surprised to see a pair of eyes looking back at me.
My uncle tells me the prisoner is a villager incarcerated for getting into a fight. He's being held until the local magistrate arrives to decide the case, when he'll either be set free or taken to nearby Kalomo for trial. Even from the outside the cell is rank with the smell of urine and feces, and I figure a night in that room is punishment enough.
Near the holding cells a narrow trench runs from the police post into the hills toward the Kariba mine, dug for the pipe that will supply the station and clinic with water from a gravity-powered tank. Under Charlie's direction a dozen men and women are at work digging about 20 metres of trench a day. While we inspect the work the Kariba boss, Mr. Mansa, keeps an eagle-eye out for signs of amethyst veins, picking up and discarding rocks as we go along.
It's an appropriate example of how random amethyst mining seems to be. As in much of Africa, mining is a viable and often lucrative business in Zambia. But unlike some countries, Zambia's minerals are modest; copper, amethyst and other semi-precious stones, instead of the oil, gold or diamond wealth of other nations. So much the better perhaps. As poor as the country is Zambia is better off without wars over resources.
But touring around Mapatizya with the top amethyst miners in Zambia, it's hard not to recall that perennial hobby of old men. (Not that the Kariba bosses are old. Jeff Chungu and Lyapa Mansa are in their late forties. But my father turns 71 this year, my uncle 61). Like a retiree with a toy train set, my dad keeps busy with the mine. It lets him dream, exercises his prodigious imagination.
Like with the name of his mine my dad believes he can leave a wealthy legacy for his sons and an epithet for himself--Zambia's first amethyst millionaire. He gives himself ten years to accomplish that dream. For now, he waits for the money to roll in, while the stones remain in the ground.
