As promised, let me tell you about the gems I saw, or didn't see, in Tanzania: on my second day, I spent rather a lot of time inside the little gem and jewelry shop owned by one of the few Tanzania retailers, a Greek immigrant named "Reno", born in Kenya.  The shop is right inside the Mount Meru hotel.  After sipping some excellent Greek coffee in his office and discussing current politics and Trade issues with Reno, his daughter Despina showed me their entire stock, where I was allowed to pick at wholesale prices.  

As you know, I am by now more seasoned at buying gems, and I no longer jump at anything unusual at first sight.  Nevertheless, the old ruby stock Reno had in his trays peaqued my interest.  There were mainly cabochons, but also several faceted pieces that I loved.  The cabochons were certified unheated by Despina's lab in Arusha, and so were the faceted gems.  By the time this blog entry appears, I have already had AGL recertify two of the cabochons, and I am waiting on the rest.  Getting (certified) unheated ruby material these days is tough going, and the Kenya material that I got is pretty rare.  

John Saul Ruby

In General, from what Reno told me, not many people right now are acquiring new stock, Reno included.  But that makes it equally interesting.  I saw a few super strongly saturated Mandarin garnets, of which I bought two (one is since sold), but I passed on unheated pink and purple Tanzanite.  All of it is also older material, and maybe I should have bought it, but I thought the ruby was still more unusual.  I also sourced a small parcel of unheated sapphires, a peach colored one as well as purples and a pink purple, all of which have the liner silk so typical of material from the Mozambique belt (most likely they are from Garba Tula Kenya).  I also got a pair of Mahenge spinel that is super saturated that I am quite happy with.  My export was facilitated via Bimal, the uncle of Jaimeen Shaw, owner of Prima Gems USA.  Bimal had us over for some amazing Cardamon tea and cookies, he still ships a lot to the US but only larger goods, not gemstone melee.  And he stocks almost nothing.  Like everyone else, he's waiting for the situation to either improve or fall apart entirely.

Kenya Sapphire

Faceted Ruby

While selecting my gems, I chatted with Despina, who provided another perspective on life in Tanzania.  Born in Kenya to Reno and his Greek wife whose name I don’t know, she led a childhood of luxury for Africa.  She went to a Greek school, got a college education, and speaks fluent Swahili, English and Greek.  But she never felt like Africa was her home.  Despina hopes to go back to Greece where she spent almost two decades of her adult life.  Back in Tanzania now for 4 years, she says she would leave tomorrow, “as I am” she said.  Just with the clothes on her back and her little 8 year old daughter Emma.  “I want to live somewhere where my windows do not have to have bars, she said.”  “Where I can go anywhere, and just walk, not have to drive, not have to worry about security.” And Kenya is now worse than Tanzania she said, especially Nairobi.  It used to be the other way around when she was young.  She feels European, not African, and of course Greece is one of the most beautiful places on earth, so I couldn't blame her.  And as much as I enjoy the visits, I could not live in Tanzania either.  The “rich” (consider it the upper middle class in the US and Europe), live in protected compounds, and white people have difficulty moving about freely because they stand a higher chance of being robbed.  They belong to no tribe and thus have no tribal protection.  I look at Tanzania and I see the United States' future, hopefully a far away future, where there is virtually no real middle class, just poor, very poor and well off, with the latter being the top of the pyramid and in need of protection because of the scarcity of resources.  Some day we will have scarcity of resources as well, if we keep multiplying as we have.  The middle class is already getting squeezed and I do not forsee it getting better.  But I digress….

Ruby Zoisite and Expedition to Longido

On our second day in Arusha, we focused on ruby, in particular, ruby in zoisite, not for cutting but for carving.  Jochen had a request from a German buyer for several hundred kilograms so he had to see what’s around and make a deal for material to be held here until hopefully the export of specimen rough including this ruby zoisite will resume.  He had one offer from one of the Master Dealers - Tony Frisby, aka the “doctor” because he has a Ph.D. to look at something at Tony’s property.  Tony, a white Kenyan in his 60s with short shaven hair and a mumble, has been dealing in Tanzania for decades.  We took a cab to hi son's house in Arusha to look at large lumps of ruby in a huge pile in the yard.  Tony now resides in Arusha downtown with his “young wife” as he explained – this is his 9^th one.  Tony converted to Muslim so he could marry more than one.  He’s divorced from some, not others.  Interesting character.

Jochen got a pretty low price for the ruby – possibly because of the export problems.  But he decided to pursue one more lead in Mundarara (not far away from the town of Longido) about an hour north-west of Arusha.  So we headed there, we were driven by one of the guys interested in making the deal.  I found that in Tanzania it was often very unclear who actually owns the material or who is negotiating for it (or if more than one person owns stuff). 

Longido Region

  

Mundarara

We turned off the tarmac road (the paved road) just past Longido onto a dirt road which we followed for about another hour (25 miles or so) to the actual place where the ruby zoisite was mined – Mundarara.  Jochen noticed that in the years since he’s last been here, there had been a lot of change for the better: a lot of nicer houses had been built – brick houses with actual roofs, larger in size – and the mining area itself was closed off properly.  There were a lot of new buildings and many of the original huts were empty.  Of course it was still on an unpaved dirt road and from our perspective it looked extremely poor, but it wasn't what it was for the people a few years ago.  So the money that was made from selling the ruby was actually going back to the town itself which was extremely nice to see!  Anything and everything was being sifted through, old pits close and new ones open at a high pace.

For Jochen to make a transaction with anyone here, we first had to make ourselves known to the person in charge, possibly the chief of the area.  We drove to the end of town and Moustache our broker, a Masai who was well known among the locals for his connections to dealers in Arusha, figured out who we need to clear our presence with. As we waited, consuming copious bananas and fresh pineapple, several people pointed at my cell phone to be photographed.  I did that not realizing they were hoping for money.  Duh.  I had no Tanzanian shillings on me so I couldn’t pay but the issue wasn’t pressed.  This was a good thing.  I felt kind of guilty.  Generally though we were asked not to take photos until we talked to the person in charge.  The mining areas are fiercely protected.  I took some secret video though with my cell phone.

 

After some time, possibly close to an hour, of waiting around, a guy appeared, shook hands with us and said everything was all good and we could proceed.  So we went to a property where the ruby was piled up (imagine a construction site about 30x10 feet) and Jochen stomped around on it looking at various pieces.  He decided it was good enough and so negotiations could commence.  No actual trade was facilitated at the time however. 

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Thursday afternoon two interesting bits of news reached us.  The first: There had been a new find of tourmaline near the mine of Ambatonapetraka (near Ibity) by the local bandit tribe, the Dahalo.  The news spread like wildfire.  The material was in crystal form only, possibly some cutting grade material also, it was pinkish and very pretty.  Nobody knew exactly how much was found, but after many phone calls many of the brokers disappeared to Ibity to try to acquire some of it – as Vazahy (white) it wasn’t safe fo us to go.  Jochen managed to buy one piece on Friday and haggled over the price over an hour via phone with the owner.  It turned out to be his most expensive purchase but probably worth it for him.  

The other and perhaps more promising news that the local fluorite mine (near Malaimbandy) had started yielding crystals (before that, there was only fluorite “massif” which was used for making eggs and such).  This had actually started earlier in 2018, and someone that Ando knew had acquired 600 kg of the stuff, which was stored in town.  Jochen was super interested in taking a look, so we took a drive across town to where the entire stash was.  In typical local fashion, and because the material easily breaks, it was stored inside someone’s house on the floor, shelves, and the bed.  And these houses are not exactly big.  Jochen loved the pieces and wanted to buy all of it.  Only we were leaving within just two days, so how to negotiate shipping, packing, and get prices for overseas freight in such a short period of time?  Unless you have an established international seller who does this type of thing all the time, you have to piece it together slowly, not via the internet but via phone calls and in person meetings.  (Things like this are the reason why Madagascar has not yet been so well explored for mineral mining – a fact that I expect will change in the next few years).

Jochen Hintze Examines Fluorite Crystals

 

Well, after some negotiations over the price, a sum was reached that was satisfactory to everyone.  Ando would get a cut, Gael maybe a small cut, Ando’s brother Thierry would also get a cut, and the owner would get the lion’s share.  The largest immediate problem first how to pack the stuff, and then the transport.  Where to get barrels, how many, how to ship and where to ship? 

 

I went to the market with Ando to try to locate bubble wrap.  That was a total failure.  Bubble wrap, which is one of the few things that don’t tear (newspaper doesn’t work) turned out to be unknown to the population of Antsirabe, despite me showing photos of it on the internet.  Ando and I finally settled on mattress foam (cheap stuff, about ½ inch thick – I guess it’s what I slept on only thinner), and bought out a tiny store, much to the surprise of the owner.  We also needed to get a “caisse” – a metal box with a lock – for my purchases and for some stuff of Jochen’s that was being shipped to the US for the Denver gemshow in September.  These tin boxes are actually made one at a time by hand.  Mine was pre ordered but the second one for Jochen had to be bought finished – we ended up with a big iron box which was probably two kilos and which seemed to have been used as a piggy bank.

After that the serious work begun.  The repurposed mattress foam had to be cut, each of the couple hundred pieces wrapped and stored in the barrels that had been located elsewhere in the meantime.  The process took several hours with the only disturbance being an upset rooster who kept walking between the fluorite.  I should add that by now the fluorite had been moved outside!

Meanwhile, the transport problem was never fully settled and is still not fully settled at the time of this writing.  What I do know is that the material was carted off to the local harbor, but transport costs turned out to be unexpectedly high – meaning that various pockets were clearly being lined with the extra.  Export papers needed to be gotten from the mining office, and the freight costs established.  The recipient of the entire lot will be my garage, where the fluorite gets to wait until January when I can ship it to Tucson.  Lucky me!

 

Sunday morning it was time to say good bye, we had to leave at 7 a.m. for Antanarrivo.  It was a sad goodbye again, Maria couldn’t join us for the drive: she was explaining a family issue I could’t understand.  My French, although much improved after a week of digging up vocabulary from my teenage years of French study, often wasn’t enough for deeper conversations.  Most people we dealt with spoke French because most schooling is still in French, but they too have an accent so it takes a bit of getting used to.

In the car, Gael and I had a long conversation about what he might do with his life, and how I might be able to help him.  He has a computer science degree but no job, so he occasionally drives for his dad.  His friends and him built a website trying to sell advertising for small businesses but that’s not very successful.  I suggested to him that he could be a tourist guide if he improved his English, since it is virtually impossible for a foreigner to get around Madagascar without local help.  Road conditions are unreliable and constantly changing, all transactions are done in cash, banking is impossible, the locals in small towns don’t speak French, cars are nearly impossible to rent.  Finally, you don’t want to do anything to get in trouble with the law (and you may not know what that is).  It’s way too risky to be a lonely traveler here unless you just go to the bigger hotels in Tana and Nosy Be.  And it is also too confusing. 

Anyway our conversation ended on the following note: I would see if I could put together a kind of “Madagascar gem buying guide” and then have him build a small website for that.  He could be the driver/guide and Ando could organize the purchasing and transactions.  They wouldn’t need a lot of clients each year, as a salary of $200 per month, so $2400 a year, is sufficient (though not great).  Jochen and I make for a few hundred dollars in commissions in one trip. 

As you have already learned, gem buying in Madagascar is not for the uninitiated, and the export hurdles we faced in Tana are yet example.  Technically, it is totally legal to export any gems and there are not export restrictions or taxes (as compared to Tanzania, for example).  That is a good thing.  All you need is a stamped paper from the mining office in Tana which you present at customs at the airport when you leave.  But the realities are another matter: even with the export papers you will get stopped.  The airport employees will tell you there’s something wrong with the paperwork, maybe something’s misspelled, or whatever, and make you wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Until you miss your plane.  Or alternatively, until you catch the drift that you are to pay a “cadeaux”, a small gift, to the custom’s officers. 

Jochen has arranged for this “gifting process” to take place ahead of time, by meeting with an officer of the mining office at the hotel Mirandav before we go to the airport.  There, we presented our invoices, and we brought our boxes for viewing in case there are any questions.  Ando and the customs official have a nice discussion in Malagasy over tea, with us sitting there smiling, until some numbers start to surface that guarantee a speedy export process.  The magic number, in our case, was just under $100 a person.  Is this legal? Ethical?  Touchy question, legal in Madagascar, yes.  According to International Law, well it’s a small amount, and it is paid to accelerate business, so while you might be teetering the line here, I think it’s a yes.  Ethical?  I think the only ethical difference is that the fee structure to accelerate business (i.e. a rush fee for a passport) is part of an official structure.  In Madagascar it isn’t, and there’s very little pay, very little by way of organized jobs.  People in my view deserve to have more than they have in such a poor country.  But there’s a sliding scale between a small gift and a large bribe, and therein lies the problem.  I do think it can and often does lead to corruption.  It leads to corruption in the US, and we have ample illustrations of that in daily news.  There’s no reason to assume it’s any different elsewhere, and the bigger problem is that here we have better enforcement. 

Incidentally, we still got stopped at the airport, but not by customs.  It was a security agent who didn’t like the metal boxes going through the scanner.  We almost missed the plane but Jochen called the mining officer who works at the airport anyway, he showed up to disentangle the mess, a long discussion in Malgasy ensued and just as the final boarding call was made Jochen was “set free to board.”  We didn’t really know what was going on but we made the plane, that was the important thing.

Life in Madagascar - this is where the rich people live

 

 

Our Breakfast Place with Expensive Goodies - Sadly Behind Bars 

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On my second day gem shopping in Antsirabe, I bought one piece of purple spinel from Ilakaka, 1.1 cts, and a small parcel of 3mm-ish spinel rounds that will need to be sorted and parceled.  I saw a lot of very dark aquamarine, quite included but super pretty otherwise, not sure what the price should have been but asking prices were high in my view, so I passed on almost all of it.  And I passed on gobs of the lighter aqua because I still have some from last time.  Ditto with all yellow beryl and morganite, as well as white beryl (goshenite).  I also ended up passing on almost all Madagascar demantoid thanks to Dudley Blauwet’s email advice who told me it looks muddy in indoor lighting (tested and confirmed). Demantoid is a hard resell unless it is Russian.  Lastly I acquired a little bit of sphene and a little bit of chrysoberyl, some more spessartite, a little lot of blue apatite, and a couple of lots of color change garnets from Bekily – I saw lots of color change garnet in fact but most of it changed from some sort of brownish to another sort of brownish, so I didn’t see the point of the investment.  I like the blue-purple change and what I got changes well so I was happy.  A warning though, all the nicer stuff was under half a carat.  

You can see a lot of the gems that I bought on my trip on Etsy.

Madagascar Emerald and Pink Tourmaline

My main investment on the Madagascar part of the trip were the sapphires, which must go to the lab to be checked for heat (I also got another pink piece that is probably from Ilakaka and which looked unheated but it’s hard to be sure about that).  The last time I got sapphire in Madagascar none of the material turned out to be heated, which is a good sign. 

Pink Sapphire from Ilakaka

By day three I was over budget, or rather, I spent more than I brought in USD, so I had to negotiate a Western Union transfer from home.  Real credit is hard to get in Madagascar because there’s not money to float anyone. Everyone needs “un avance” or the entire amount paid once the purchase is completed.  And there are no returns, only exchanges if the broker mis-informed you about the item or didn’t know what it was (brokers do not have GIA degrees, and many also lack experience).  For my sapphire trade I was able to negotiate a wire transfer for a later point because Ando has finally managed to get a bank account with the Bank of Africa to grow her trade.  A novelty around here.

Madagascar Aquamarine

Of course I brought as many gifts for my friends as my suitcase as possible, among them 3 clinique gift bags which I get every October and March.  Ando’s cousin Mamavelo was thrilled to receive one, I saw it in her purse all week.  I gave the other two to Ando and Maria.  I gave away two smart phones, even with a cracked screen it was accepted gratefully.  I had a suitcase full of old clothes and I gave them away a little at a time (some had to be saved for Doreen in Kenya – of whom I will tell in a later blog).  Anything and everything was needed and used. Absolutely positively nothing is thrown out.  When we went to restaurants children would wait outside for leftovers and eat them on the spot.  It’s very hard to come to the realization that it is impossible to equalize things.  People are simply at a financial disadvantage and nothing can change that. 

Here’s a little anecdote that helps illustrate. When Gael drove up from Antsirabe to pick us up, he asked Jochen if he could bring his friend up to Nosy Be.  Jochen said sure.  However, the (not understood) implication was that said friend would drive back with us during the two day drive back down, thus taking up space in the back seat where we intended to sleep during the voyage.  Also, said friend was unknown to Jochen and we had a lot of cash with us, so it wasn’t really ok with us to have to have another “guest”.  Gael didn’t exactly ask if he could bring his friend back with him in the car, so the matter had been left unclear until the last moment (well, Gael said he had made it clear, Jochen said he did not, and I wasn’t there to hear the conversation…).  So when the friend got into the vehicle at the Ferry Terminal, Jochen got angry, and the friend ended up staying behind and taking the bus.  This meant that the friend incurred a travel cost of $30 – a lot of money in Madagascar.  This was unintended of course and I have since reimbursed the cost.  Jochen was against this as he didn’t feel Gael was being polite.  My view was that in Europe or in the US this is true, but this is not so in a country in which people have no choice but to rely on one another because there’s no money.  (And the government, regardless of who is in charge, takes in taxes and keeps them pretty much, it is a system of making oneself rich, not a system for the people, despite the appearance of democracy: people who can’t read vote based on photos with numbers provided by their local politicians).

 

The People

The people here are extraordinarily friendly and helpful.  Both Gael and Ando, the two people I know best, are highly intelligent and curious about the world.  Ando has a memory for numbers that I can only envy, and Gael can fix anything to do with technology (he has a degree in computer science, also a rare thing here).  I get lots of hugs from Ando and her daughter Maria, and Ando’s youngest, Tia, has adopted me and Ton Ton Jochen as their aunt and uncle.  It is the friendly way of accepting their fate that tugs at me.  When we give, it is most welcome, but people ask for things (like a coke or a glass of wine at dinner) with care, and I almost feel that they worry not to anger us to ask too much, yet if they start asking maybe it never ends (Jochen feels that this has already happened in his case, at least on occasion).  Jochen sometimes worries being taken advantage of and I don’t blame him, but it is hard to call it that when such dire need exists, and the need can only be mitigated by us. It is a predicament that cannot be resolved, I feel.

Ando's Daughter Tia

Little Tia Plays with Big Yvonne

Gem Market

On Thursday afternoon, we took a trip via “pousse pousse” (rickshaw) to the two local gem markets. 

Pousse Pousse in Antsirabe

For Jochen, and now for me, the custom had become the custom to visit every single booth so that nobody would miss out on the chance to make a little money – for not much money is made at the markets here with just an occasional tourist wandering in a few times a day (and there were a couple of dozen shops!).  I had also adopted the custom of letting Ando know which “boite” (box) of the various shops I am interested in, then politely remove myself from earshot so she could negotiate the price and her commission – removing myself is kind of silly because I don’t speak Malgash but it indicates that I am not trying to find out the price directly.  Ando would then take the boxes I like, get the phone number of the owner and the price, and we take them back to the hotel for me to look at and consider more carefully, i.e. loupe and weigh the gems.  

The Gem Market in Antsirabe

   

Making money selling gems is very difficult for the locals in Madagascar.  The infrastructure is poor, the internet connections are poor, the banking system is poor.  And there is a constant need to cover other expenses, so that when you try to provide a loan for a business to get started, the money may not end up in the right place.  Case in point: Last summer, Ando asked me for a $2000 loan. Her family owns the land where calcite is mined. Calcite is a blue mineral, not good enough for faceting but good enough for “eggs” and slices and other nicknacks to be sold overseas.  She needed to finance transport with an oxcart as well as a faceting wheel.  The owner of the business interested in transacting with her was not willing to loan her the funds to get started.

So I sent the money to her via Western Union with the agreement that I could trade it for gems so she could make an additional commission.  We agreed.  In November, I let her know which gems interested me and in January Jochen brought me a bunch of stuff when we met up in Tucson.  I picked what interested me, then let her know what I would be returning, only to find out that Ando actually bought all those gems with her first incoming profit when I thought she just memo’d them. Ando then confessed that she didn’t quite have the “street cred” to borrow gems to send overseas.  Or perhaps what was really going on was that people pressured her to pay right away because they all need money, so she took the risk and it backfired.  Her profit was gone and she had made a poor purchase that was hard to turn back into money.  Stories like that are typical I’m afraid.

Well, you probably want to know what happened next.  First, I decided was to ask my friend Dudley Blauwet from Dudley Blauwet gems if he wanted what I didn’t need at my cost at a trade for his merchandise at his wholesale price.  I figured he might have other clients than I do and that way I could turn the merchandise into other merchandise with a higher chance of selling it.  Dudley agreed to the trade, and I threw in some phenakite I had laying around to sweeten the deal. 

But I had another bad surprise waiting for me.  Dudley did RI texts on the grandidierite and some of the chrysoberyl, neither of which I had looked very carefully.  The grandidierite turned out to be mixed together with aqua, two chrysoberyl turned out to be sphene and another was a weird color zircon. So Dudley returned the goods but I was stuck with the trade ($1600) – or rather, after that I didn’t dare to ask for that trade back and send him a check instead!  I told Ando what happened and she was mortified.  At this point, we had already planned for my summer visit so she asked me to bring the materials back and we would sort it out during my stay.

Fast forward to my day at the gem market.  Ando and I had taken the goods that I brought back into her possession with the plan to show the original sellers and facilitate if not a return, then at least a trade.  I also enlisted Jochen for a “good cop bad cop” game.  When we got to the booth of the sellers, I showed them the little bags onto which Dudley had written what the gems actually were.  Jochen did his job acting “tres facher” (angry) because my reputation in America was now (supposedly) tainted, and I was conciliatory, saying I was sure it was a mixup (and these mixups DO happen because many of these brokers don’t have much gem expertise).  A trade was facilitated.  I now own a shitload of rhodolite garnet but at least it is that: garnet.  And some real aqua.  Now that I am back here, I have to try sell all that.  But ok.  Hopefully nobody in Madagascar got too hurt.  Because the thing is that every party has to make a little bit of money and I feel responsible for producing the lion’s share of cash because I am the connection to the “big” money in the United States.  Sidenote: my reputation really isn’t tainted but that was only because I didn’t try to sell the stuff on Etsy.  So there really was that risk.

Garnet from Madagascar

Lunchtime at the Nearby Market

   

And Where are the Rich People? Behind These Gates

Here's a little Video of the Local Market in Antsirabe - Where you buy just about anything because stores are not very common around here

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After a 4:30 a.m. morning rise (for which neither of our alarms rang but Jochen appeared to have an internal clock), we made our way to the ferry terminal for the 6 a.m. ferry to the mainland town of Anify.  The ferry was big enough for exactly two cars, and it went as fast as a turtle.  So it took us two hours to reach Anify which was perhaps a distance of 10km.  But it allowed for a beautiful morning view of the sunrise and a nice nap on the backseat of the 4-wheel Toyota with the “tuk tuk” of the ferry engine and the slight waves lulling me to sleep.  Upon arrival we bought some (non Dunkin) donuts, freshly made from rice flour and soaked in sugar syrup.  Beats Dunkin any day – not that anyone over here had ever heard of Dunkin Donuts, or any other chain for that matter, including McDonald’s. So lovely...

Here in Madagascar, street food is available in abundance.  Not everyone here cooks for themselves because it’s quite a bit of work to start a charcoal fire, mix fresh dough and cut and wash vegetables at 5 a.m. Refrigerators are a rarity in Madagascar and so is running water.  This is why just before sunrise, when the day begins, people cook rice and meats, make their rice cakes in shallow pans, fry sweet donuts and vegetable or meat pakoras, which they offer on the street in little booths, together with bananas and fresh cut salads of cucumber, cabbage, tomato and carrot.

The first part of our treck took about ten hours, first leading tropical forest with cocoa and ylang-ylang plants, then through open areas past half dried up rivers (since it’s winter here and dry season).  Just after dark at around 7 p.m. we reached our stop for the night, a tiny town called "Ambordromamy."  Gael stopped on the side of the street and asked a local about a hotel for the Vasahy, the whites.  After chatting with the local for a bit, he arrived at two options for where to stay.  One was more of a hotel meant for Vasahy travelers, the other more of a spot for Malagasy.  We were advised however to stay at the latter.  The reason: there are Dahalo, a bandid tribe, in the countryside and when whites stay in the nice(r) hotel sometimes one of their lookouts makes a cell phone call when they leave to organize an armed highway robbery.  It is especially dangerous when you leave before sunrise.  So we heeded the advice and stayed in the not so nice place (but I think the nicer place wouldn’t have been much nicer).  And we didn’t leave before sunrise either.

The Streets and our Hotel in Ambordromamy Madagascar

  

Once at the hotel, the owner proudly showed us that he had availability of a shower across the yard (one shower for the entire guest house which had perhaps five or six rooms).  There was “kind of” a shower – a narrow room with a sink and a pipe leading up a wall, a fixture at the end of a pipe and a lever to turn on the water.  When I tried it, however, it didn’t work.  A closer look revealed a blue plastic barrel next to the shower with a little bucket in it and a sign in French which said something like “one barrel per person only."  Once my brain had fired up and I had absorbed what a "shower" would therefore entail, I was also able to reason that the water would not be hot.  It was wet, that is all.  So I skipped the shower.  The toilet “stall” was across the yard also.  Another barrel next to the seat indicated the flushing method.  Lighting was provided by the lantern in my back pack.  The door was to be barricaded with a broom, the high gate was locked at night.  Gael slept in the car to protect the luggage.  Well, it was a short night anyway, sleep assured with a beer and a couple of shots of whisky from the bottle secured in Duty-free at Nairobi.  At daybreak around 6 a.m., we had nice filling street food breakfast (banana fried in sweet dough, fresh rice cakes, nescafe with sweetened condensed milk since regular milk doesn’t last).  I took a long and restful morning nap in the back of the car once we hit the road.

Breakfast in Ambordromamy

The first part of the drive ahead of us was about five hours, back to the capital Tana, so we could stop at the hotel Mirandav, where the rest of our luggage had been stowed as a courtesy of the owner, who has known Jochen for many years. 

The drive slowly lead uphill through a more mountainous region and into more dry lands.  At one point during the drive, I saw Jochen throw his plastic water bottle out of the window and went “tsk” to chastise him for littering. I should have known better than to make that accusation.  What I hadn’t fully processed was that just seconds before, a little boy who saw Jochen drinking the water called out to him “rembourser” – reuse.  So Jochen tossed him the bottle.  In the poor countryside, plastic bottles are of great value.  They can be refilled with water from the local wells, they can be used as funnels, who knows what else.  They are especially valuable when they still have a cap.  After that realization, we tossed all our empty bottles out the window; of which there were many because we were advised not to drink the local water.  Since there are little villages all along the single lane, the “highway,” you always see people walking along on the side, either on the paved road, or in the red dirt.  They pick up anything you toss.  It is the perfect recycling (in fact I did not see a single garbage dump anywhere here).  But it is also a sign of the immense poverty that exists in Madagascar.  Most people are barefoot, many have ripped clothes, you see people pushing bikes so old and rusty that they are only good for carrying water bottles or jugs, and you see many many women balancing huge loads of various stuff on their head, walking for miles and miles every day bringing things back from town or from the fields.  Kids on the road often pointed to us, calling out “Vasahy” – white person.  While there were some cars on the road, and many trucks, most do not have white people in them.

North-East Madagascar

We reached Tana just a little bit before noon and stopped again at “Chez Maman” for pork chops and duck, excellently spiced grilled vegetables, and madeleines, all again for under $10 for three of us.  Food is quite impressive in Madagascar, and very fresh.  You only need to worry about things like fish or mayonnaise sitting in the sun too long, or shrimp hanging out on the boat before being delivered.  So that’s why you best eat things well cooked and cooked right before consumption.  I had many fresh salads in Madagascar however, they just looked too appetizing.  And many of the open kitchens work hard to keep things clean and well washed, which belies the dusty and sometimes dirty looking context.  Pots and pans are old because they cost money, and they get black from the charcoal cooking.  Most cups and plates are made from aluminum.  You only see glassware in restaurants for Vasahy.

After picking up our luggage, we started our drive to the final destination of Antsirabe, the city of gem trade and the stop for us for five nights.  Other than the fact that we got slowed down trying to pass dozens of large trucks and taxi-bus’ filled to the brim with people and luggage piled on their roofs, we traveled with just one incident to report.  There was seemingly dead or injured body lying in the street, partially covered by tarp, and bringing traffic on the opposite side to a dead halt. He was illuminated by the headlights of the truck trying to get past.  Nobody appeared to get out and help.  We drove past slowly.  Gael explained that since it was after dark, it might be a trap so nobody wants to risk stopping.  Plus there’s not really any police or ambulance to call.  This reminded me of a story Jochen once related to me: many years ago, on one of his car trips through Africa, Jochen gave a ride to a young women in labor who was clearly in distress.  He dropped her at a hospital a couple hours away.  Without his help, the woman may have died.  Out in the middle of nowhere, help to the injured is not an available convenience.

Houses and a Rice Terrace North of Antsirabe

We finally arrived at the Green Park Hotel in Antsirabe a little after 7 p.m. only to find out that our rooms were not ready because either Jochen, or the owner of the hotel, or Ando had confused the dates.  So we were given other huts (each room at Green Park is actually a little brick hut), smaller than the ones booked, and though they have running water, it was cold on that day.  The water is warmed by the sun on the roof and it had been an overcast day – or maybe the hot water was just out for the day.  I didn’t brace the shower until the next morning, and it was the fastest shower ever! 

Green Park Hotel and a Pousse Pousse Outside the Hotel

  

We started buying gems almost immediately the next morning after breakfast.  Ando had organized wooden table and some chairs, right outside the hotel on a meadow.  Brokers were already waiting in a kind of line, chatting with one another, then unpacking their wares on the table once it was their turn.

I was shown quite a bit of interesting material.  I haggled over a small lot of 6mm cushion mandarin garnets from Mahaiza for quite a bit.  The initial price offered, which is always “a discuter”, was very high in my opinion.  Since I didn’t have too much equipment with me, I was careful in my choice.  But bright orange garnets are a fairly safe buy, they are unlikely to be anything else.  I also purchased two small parcels of color change garnets, a little bit of rhodolite garnet and two matched pairs of sanidine (a Feldspar), a bigger lot blue and teal blue sapphires between .8 and 2 carats from Diego and Ambatondrazaka, as well as a little bit of pink tourmaline (rounds only).  I eye balled some green tourmaline but found it muddy in color, nothing special.  I was actually shown a lot of tourmaline but nothing really stood out.  Since I try to do a little bit of business with each broker and not everyone shows you useful stuff, I bought just a very small bit.

Grandidiarite, one of the 10 rarest minerals on earth, turned out to be widely available because there was a big find a few months or year ago.  I guess it won’t make that list anymore in the near future, given how much there is.  The price had dropped accordingly and as it sometimes goes in this trade, those who bought at the high got caught with their pants down, including our friend Ando (a sad story that needs to be covered in the next blog).  Grandidierite is just not pretty enough to fetch high prices except for rarity, even the nicer blue colors.  And having made the mistake before of buying what I thought was grandidiarite which turned out to be muddy aqua, I only got two cabochons which I can test at home – and of which I am fairly sure they are what they are supposed to be (update: both cabochons have since been tested and are indeed grandidiarite).  I also risked small funds on two tiny local emeralds which will need to be tested.  We saw a beautiful piece of faceted bottle glass which someone tried to sell for about $800 as an emerald.  I kind of knew it was fake just looking at it, the microscope did the rest.  (I saw a bigger piece around a carat which I didn’t think is fake but the initial asking price was fairly high and I just wasn’t going to risk it). 

Gem Buying in Antsirabe

 

I also examined a pretty ruby oval with bubbles under magnification which indicated it was glass filled.  I did get a couple of tiny pieces of ruby that looked more promising (but too small to test on location), but I didn’t spend much just to be on the safe side.

There was one lot of peach pink supposedly Malaya garnet and some rather similar looking zircon – a gem with a peachy yellowish tint (the ones in Tanzania are more peachy, here most Zircon is more yellow).  I bought some of both for telling apart back at home, the lines of people to show us things were long and it was very important to us to give everyone a chance because you never know how long they travelled.  Also, the gem trade in Madagascar is in it’s infancy (or maybe “childhood”) compared to Arusha.  While minerals have been available here to buy for some decades, it’s the huge sapphire finds of the past few years that have put it on the map, and the other discoveries are just following.  The difficult travel conditions, and the lack of easily available large funds are slowing the development.  The law forbids non-Malagasy to enter mining regions, the lack of security makes it unadvisable.  Some locations can only be accessed with a 2-5 day foot march, which few non-locals are willing to subject themselves to.

 

The gem brokers in Madagascar are an interesting bunch.  They are 90% female, and they borrow their wares from various “proprietaries.” They come armed with a price list (though they usually have an excellent memory for numbers and don’t need it), then start negotiating with a high asking price or ask you to make an initial offer for discussion.  No price is fixed, ever.  The brokers live off the commission so the higher the prices we pay, the better for them.  Whenever my idea of price and theirs was just too far apart, I would explain that middle price is impossible.  My exception for that were stones from Maria or Ando, whom I want to support.  In their case, I would to figure out an honest price but slightly on the higher side.  I would also try to explain what my clients like or what I can sell, but that often fell on deaf ears because the need to make money simply has priority.  There is an urgent need here to earn some sort of a living and for these small brokers there isn’t a big clientele, which is why I sometimes overpaid.  The downside to that is that money ran out faster.  All deals are cash based, credit cards don’t exist except in the expensive hotels and even there they prefer the credit card just to hold the reservation (even at the Vanila spa, which was $150 a night, we ended up paying cash). 

Once everyone is through and first choices are made, the women return the gems they borrowed and get others from different people or from their supplies.  Often the result is that you see the same stuff presented by different brokers.  But I have a good memory too.  Not always for prices, but I rarely forget a gem that I have seen before.

More about gem buying next time...

Below are some of the gems I brought back from Madagascar and that will soon be in the shop.  I have set up a section on Etsy for Africa Gems, all of which will be discounted durig the sale.

Unheated Sapphires (Tested)

Mandarin Garnet

Chrysoberyl

Color Change Garnet, Strong Change but not pictured

Sphene

Sanidine, a Feldspar

Grandidierite Cabochons (Tested)

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The first destination on my most recent trip to Madagascar was the Island of Nosy Be, slightly to the northwest of Madagascar and very close to the coast.  Before starting my gem buying, I allowed myself a few relaxing days under palm trees.  On my eight-hour night flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi I met up with my travel buddy Jochen Hintze from Jentsch Minerals.  We had so much to catch up on during the flight that I missed out on a bit of sleep.  Luckily the Business Class Lounge in Nairobi has some couches, where I ended up crashing for three and a half of our six-hour stopover (it was supposed to be just five hours but “that is Africa” as you hear many Africans say). 

We arrived in Antananarivo (called “Tana”), the capital of Madagascar, on the following day, Wednesday at 4 p.m.  Tana is by far the largest city in Madagascar.  It lies in the central plateau, about 1500 meters above sea level and has a very mild climate.  As you fly over the 3000 mile island from the West, you will see hundreds of miles of a nearly uninhabited red mountainous region – deforested in the 1500 years since Indo-Malayans first populated the island.  Your landing approach takes you over the more lush region of the central highlands with many rice paddies and rivers turned red from the earth surrounding it.

 

Aerial Shots of The Red Island, Madagascar

 

As soon as we got past the temperature and health check for yellow fever, completed our visa application and made it past the police stop, we saw Ando, Jochen’s longtime broker friend, and her daughter Maria, waiving to us from the queue.  After many welcoming hugs, we took a taxi straight to hotel Mirandav, a small and private hotel not far from the airport.  At the hotel, we were greeted by another familiar face, Mamavelo, one of the brokers from Antsirabe and part of Ando’s extensive family.  Mamavelo had taken the local taxi-bus up to Tana to get the very first opportunity to show goods to Jochen, and Ando and Maria had brought some stuff for me – time is always too short and all prices have to be individually negotiated.  Ando does a great job announcing our arrival to dozens of dealers, letting them know what we are interested in and arranging the meetings.  So we spent our first two hours fresh off the plane looking at gems at a table in front of my room, shaded by palm trees; just until past nightfall at 6 p.m., when even the battery operated lantern I brought didn’t yield enough information any more.  I saw several new sapphire parcels of blue-green, blue and pink shades, some nice rich dark but included aqua, a parcel of Malaya garnet ovals, as well as sphene, chrysoberyl and a lot of demantoid for me to mull over.  I was too tired to make any decisions but I set aside what I liked for Ando to talk to the “proprietaries” about more realistic prices than the first quotes, which are traditionally way too high.

 

Reunion with Ando Antoniania, our Broker

 

For dinner, we went to a restaurant for Tana locals – Chez Maman - and where we were indeed the only white faces.  I had some excellent salads, beef tongue with French fries, and the local beer, THB – Three Horses Beer.  For the four of us, dinner and drinks came to just under $10.  I tried to take some video, it was funny sitting at such a noisy street with cars honking at each other, buyers and sellers of who knows what arguing, tables tightly packed, and feeling completely out of place, just not in a bad way. 

After we got back to the Mirandav and finished rearranging our suitcases so that some of them could stay at the hotel (the local airline doesn’t allow 2 pieces of luggage so one had to stay behind), I was out like a light.

 

Hotel Mirandav, Ivato (Near Antanarivo)

  

At 5 a.m., the alarm rang again so we could start the next leg of our flight.  The flight to Nosy Be was scheduled for 7:30 a.m.  Just as we were about to leave, at 6 a.m., there was a knock on the door.  It was another broker from Antsirabe; her name is Gitte, just like my aunt, and who had taken the bus up to see us before our flight was leaving, not realizing we had an early morning flight.  Jochen didn’t want her to feel bad so he let her unpack her wares right on the bed amidst the packed luggage in the dark.  But we just didn’t have time (or light for that matter). Gitte was really disappointed.  It’s a five hour ride on a crappy taxi bus from Antsirabe. (Luckily we were able to buy some stuff from her at a later point in the trip).

We made it to the airport at around 6:15 a.m., and already there was a long line for “Air Maybe” – the local nickname for Air Madagascar.  Air Madagascar has earned this nickname for its high unreliability.  Maybe it goes somewhere, and maybe not, maybe it flies on time, and maybe not.  For instance, when there’s no fuel or there aren’t enough passengers booked, it doesn’t take off.  Ticket prices are equally unreliable and depend on fuel costs as well as the number of passengers booked – tickets for flights within Madagascar are usually quite expensive, but despite all these disadvantages, it is a far better way to get around than driving long distances on poor and only partially paved roads!

Well, we lucked out.  We weren’t on time or anything – there was not enough personnel to check us in quickly.  But we did leave.  Only not to Nosy Be!  Literally just before takeoff the pilot announced that we were making another stop, just north of Nosy Be on the mainland, at the town of Diego Suarez / Antsiranana (that’s the former French name and the later Malagasy name).  Back in the day this area was considered a hideout for Portuguese pirates.  It doesn’t look very exciting there now though. 

The reason, apparently, for our stop was to drop off some cargo.  Another plane had engine trouble so our plane took its cargo over to Diego.  None of the passengers even raised an eyebrow about the change in plans.  A local Frenchman said to us “c’est normal.”  So we accepted it as normal, enjoyed the view from above, and tried not to be phased by the two hour delay (late takeoff, extra hour on the plane, and a short stay in Diego where we had to all leave the plane only to sit in a tiny arrival hall with nothing in it but chairs, and then get back on).

Aerial Shots of Diego, Madagascar and Nosy Mitsio

  

At the airport we were met by our driver for the stay, Ando’s cousin Gael who’s father owns the Toyota Jeep we had rented, and who had made the entire two day trip by car.  Gael had decided to use the occasion to visit some friends of his who live on the island.  The original plan had been for Gael to pick us up at the end of the stay in Nosy Be, but he’s a fun companion and we were glad to have the car.  Gael turned 30 this year, he is well educated by Madagascan standards with a degree in computer science, he’s funny, very curious about things and and enjoys driving Jochen around during his gem buying tours.  I had already met Gael on my last trip, and we had a lot of interesting discussions comparing our lives.

Gael and Yvonne

The Island, as best as I can describe it, is a small slice of paradise.  I had never been anywhere so tranquil and peaceful.  From my reading, I ascertained that Nosy Be has over 40,000 inhabitants but it doesn’t feel at all crowded.  And according to Gael’s observations, it has more white people than anywhere else in Madagascar in one place.  I should qualify this remark: by my standards there were very few white people here, perhaps 1 in 100.  Nosy Be probably also has the largest number of rich people in Madagascar, with perhaps the exception of Tana.  The rich on Nosy Be are mostly French tourists I presume, but at our hotel – the Vanila Hotel and Spa - there were people from all over: Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, and a group of rich Malagasy.  Generally the hotel did not seem very occupied for this August, which is not only vacation time all over the world, but winter in Madagascar with very mild days (85-90 degrees, not humid, about 70 at night).  The hotel itself was fantastic: rooms were large and airy and equipped with AC and flat screen tv’s (an absolute rarity in Madagascar); the mattress made of memory foam and the food, which was largely French with some local influences, very good (think French brasserie with an Asian flair).  The prawns and shrimp had very unique taste, nothing like the Thai stuff we usually get in the US, and the desserts (sadly for my waistline) were absolutely excellent.  Every Saturday there is a big buffet with local Malagasy food, i.e. roasted red snapper and coconut chicken curry.  And banana dessert wrapped in banana leaves, in addition to cheesecake, fresh fruits and crème caramel.  For breakfast, lunch and dinner, you could order fresh pressed juices, tuck into a nice size buffet and get fresh made omelettes and French pastries. 

Images of the Vanila Hotel and Spa in Nosy Be

      

But for me, so far, the highlight of this trip was an entirely unexpected one: I learned scuba diving!  I came here expecting to do some snorkeling but Jochen convinced me to try the sport with him.  Nosy Be is well known for its coral reefs located just off shore, boasting a wide variety of marine life.  It turned out that there was a diving school right next door, run by a French marine biologist and his wife, Alain Benoit and Nathalie.  They used to live in the Comores but according to Alain, who was our diving teacher for the duration, the coral reefs there are dying from pollution and so they relocated.  Alain is also an excellent photographer by trade (see his photos here)

Unfortunately the money Alain earned through photography and writing was not sufficient, which is one reason why they founded the Sakalov Diving School.  The couple also operates an Air BnB and they offer other excursions to familiarize travelers with the local flora and fauna.  Alain related to us that he had co-authored an article about one of the coral reefs near Nosy-Be, explaining the extinction it faces and how to help prevent it, yet nobody seemed interested in publishing it.  My own feeling is that magazines all over the world are flooded with articles about how we are managing to kill the planet.

 

But let’s get back to the more uplifting (or perhaps downlifting) subject of diving.  I was actually a bit scared to be dependent upon a tube for breathing.  You have to first get used to breathing through your mouth, and the sound of the regulator was very loud and unnerving to me.  Add to that the thought that your “breathing tube” could easily pop out of your mouth if you don’t remember it’s vital importance while staring at colorful fish.  But we didn’t dive very deep and there was no decompression needed – so if you panic you can just swim back up. In addition to that, I bit on my mouthpiece quite hard, so much so that I was concerned about leaving toothmarks. 

Yvonne Diving near Nosy Sakatia

Our first dive took us to an exploratory six meters, the second to about 12 – a fact that I was blissfully unaware of until Alain told us at the end of the day.  On day two we went down to 15 meters, and we saw a baby seahorse nesting in the wall of one of the reefs.  On the final day I got my diving certificate which meant, of course, that I had to go to a diving depth of 18 meters, but not for very long. 

I didn’t find it very hard to dive, but it was a little tricky to regulate your buoyancy, and my ears didn’t like the water pressure so I had to go down very slowly (imagine going up and down in an elevator very fast, you have to swallow hard or hold your nose and breathe out hard to “pop your ears”.  Before each dive we got to practice some safety procedures, most of which would not likely be needed on these kinds of dives, but I appreciated them just the same.  It felt quite weird taking my mouth tube out under water, letting it go and then finding it again and putting it back – or swimming over to Jochen and grabbing his backup regulator to simulate a regulator or air failure on my part.  For getting a certificate, all these exercises are required.  Ugh. 

Weirdly enough, I never panicked during any of the dives, somehow I thought at first I’d want to go back up but then I got distracted by all those “fishes” and coral, sea cucumbers, star fish, lion fish and I don’t know what else – or yes a mantis shrimp, a very colorful animal.  Some of the star fish and corals literally seemed like they “glow in the dark.”  It’s a funny experience because even though you easily see it in photos online, you can’t imagine how colorful it is “down there.”  And how surreal the entire experience is.  In the end, I am very glad I did this and hope to do it again to see what else is hiding down there.

Gael, who had never been on a boat (and had only once been to a beach before, a year or so ago together with Jochen and his sister) came with us on our first day, and he was so delighted by the experience that we decided to sponsor a dive for him on the second day.  Gael didn’t know how to swim but he bravely jumped into the shallower waters with some flippers borrowed from Nathalie.  He told us later that when he saw Jochen and me paddling around in the water he thought to himself” “this can’t be that hard.”  Nathalie explained that you don’t need to know how to swim in order to dive.  There are just restrictions about the amount of time you can stay under (20 minutes) and how deep you can go (I believe it’s around 3 meters but it might be a bit more).  Gael absolutely loved it – the experience of a lifetime he said.  He even got a little diving baptism certificate! 

On a sidenote: diving in Nosy Be is very cheap, about $85 for a day which includes two dives with the required rest in between and which lasts about 5 hours in total.  The certificate, with the test at the end and a diving log book cost me $405.

The second highlight of our Nosy Be trip was a visit to Lemuria, a little natural park on the South East side of the island.  The park houses over 25 different species of lemurs.  They are so cute – I wanted to take one with me.  The lemurs are tamed by park rangers.  New arrivals are fenced in at first until they get used to humans.  Jochen and I got to feed the lemurs with banana smeared on our open palms.  One cannot pet them however.  Apparently they might bite if you touch their tails because that’s their “rudder” and very important to their ability to climb and jump.

Our guide, a very exuberant young Malgash who was super excited to practice German, talked through just about all of my recordings which would otherwise have a very idyllic background of rustling trees and “chatting” lemurs.  Next year they will have some big cruise ships arriving.  Hopefully they don’t destroy everything.

Helle Ville, Nosy Be

 

In my next blog, read about my travels to the gem capital of Madagascar, Antsirabe…

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This coming Monday I am leaving on my second trip to Africa.  I will be revisiting some of the places of last time and adding a couple new ones.  Continue reading

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We left for the airport at Antanarivo (Tana), Madagascar, in the early morning hours to catch the mid-day flight to Nairobi, Kenya with a connecting flight to Kilimanjaro (Kili), Tanzania. Travel involved a 3 to 4 hr car ride from Antsirabe to Tana, and then a meeting with the local mining office for export. An export fee is hashed out based on our purchases. It seems to be rather fluid and is... Continue reading