Precision Gem

Tanzania Africa - Gem Trip - July 2009

I departed for Tanzania Africa on June 30th along with fellow cutters and friends Peter Torraca, and Roger Dery from the Detroit Airport heading to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam, we switched flights and spent another 8 hours getting to Mt. Kilimanjaro airport. We were picked up by our main gem dealer in Arusha, Jamal, and take to our hotel. We couldn't see much on the drive of about 30 miles into Arusha other than a rough road, with endless speed bumps.

This first picture is the view out of my hotel window. These crude shanties were made of stone block and metal roof. I would suspect they consisted of a single room inside. Each household seemed to be accupied by a business man who would set up shop every morning on the street, selling just about anything from backpacks, shoes, to food. They would arise early, and haul everything out, then return it all at night.

That morning we met up with Jamal at his office. Jamal proved to be a most wonderful host for our entire stay. All the people we met were very friendly and helpful. Even the people on the streets where fun and we enjoyed their company as we walked through the markets.

Jamal had informed many of the local miners and dealers that we would be in town, and by mid morning there was a line outside his door. Each person would wait patiently for the most part to get in and have the chance to show us his goods. Often the stones were just wrapped in toilet paper, and at times were just one or two stones, and other times large parcels. Jamal's assistant would allow one trader in at a time, with the others out in hall behind the barred door. This guy below doesn't look too happy about the offer Roger made him!

Quite a variety of stones were shown the first day, many types of garnets, sapphires, spinel and even some Amethyst. One of my main focuses on this trip was tsavorite garnet, and I was able to obtain some very nice pieces. The tsavorites I picked up will cut from just under 1 carat to over 4. Below is a picture of a few tsavorites from the first day.

Most of the locals would quote prices in Tanzanian Shillings, so we were for ever converting these to dollars. The conversion is about 1300 shillings to one dollar, so it took a bit getting used to hearing prices in the hundreds or even millions of Shillings. Here is Roger and Peter adding up all these shillings to see if there was enough money left over for dinner.

We were informed that the Spessartite mine in Tanzania is played out, and there is no new production. However there were several large parcels of material shown. Most of it was what I would consider cab grade, however a few smaller parcels were very clean, the cleanest I have seen of this material. Of course, we bought the best pieces.

Below are some of the spessartite parcels we looked at.

There was one large parcel of yellow scapolite that we were shown by the owner of the mine. After much back and forth bargaining, Roger and the owner came to an agreement on the price.

This parcel of Scapolite from Tanzania is made up of pieces 5 to 15 grams. We picked through these and each took some very nice pieces. With Scapolite the strongest color is down the "C" axis, so you look for shapes that will work well cut down this axis. As a relatively inexpensive stone, scapolite makes a nice stone to showcase more exotic and custom cutting in a larger stone.

On Saturday morning, we the privilage of meeting with Mark Saul of Swala Gem Traders. Mark had some top quality Spessartite garnet, the finest we had seen so far from Tanzania, and very nice Tsavorite garnet from their own mine which is close by Arusha. I picked up a parcel of spessartite with one very large clean stone that looks like it should cut between 7 and 8 cts, along with some larger tsavorite garnet, the largest being just over 13 cts.

Mark's office is very well run, and the pace moved along quickly. Aside from the garnets, I was able to purchase top color spinels from the famed Mahenge find in the Morogoro region of Tanzania from Mark.

I just was able to pick up the stones from Customs tonight. If you are importing rough stones with a value over $2000, you must get the package cleared through customs with a customs broker. The whole process seems silly since there is not duty to pay on uncut stones, I think it's one of those things to keep everyone employed in government.

So, here are a few pictures of some of the stones I bought. This first parcel is the red/pink spinel from Mahenge. Everything thing here will cut over 1 ct. and a few over 2 to maybe 3 ct stones. The color is just fantastic.

These next stones are some of the Tanzanite pieces I bought. These are all unheated, natural blues. The unheated stones show the 3 colors stronger than do heated stones. These will all cut 1+ to 2+ ct stones.

We traveled one day out to the area where these yellow grossular garnets are mined. It was quite a journey, not exactly a road going out there, more a trail for the Maasi to move their cattle on. The Maasi are nomads who are hearders of cattle and goats. On the way out to the mining area we passed several very small villages of these people. The following are a few pictures on the way.

This dried up creek bed was filled with very small garnets crystals. The stones were just bigger than sand.


The yellow grossular garnets below, are mined in this area. We had a look around, but didn't find the mine area. We felt bad for Jamal driving this far out and didn't want him to risk any damage to his vehicle as the "road" was getting pretty tough going, so we headed back.

The area where these garnets are found is called Lolatema, they say that the water runs out of the mountain and into the village here. Since the rainy season was over, we didn't see the any water running, just the dried up stream bead.

Tanzanite One

A company from South Africa took over one of the tanzanite blocks, block "C" and formed Tanzanite One. This is a large scale mining operation, with automated equipment. The locals were not too happy about this, as it eliminated a large area for them to mine. You can read all about Tanzanite One at their website. Seems they are trying to get tanzanite controlled similar to what is going on with the diamond trade.
In the photo on the bottom right, you can see the the area that Tanzanite One dumps the digging after they have been gone through. The locals will go into this area and look around for anything that was missed.