September 2, 2008: Sapphires

[xoxoxoBruce]

When I think of sapphires, the bright blue stones come to mind, but they actually run the whole spectrum of the rainbow.



Boston.com shows us sapphire mining in Ilakaka, Madagascar.

In the big open pits, a human chain moves the dirt(ore) up to the top by way of a human chain, with shovels. About as labor intensive as it gets.



The independent, freelancers, wildcatters, whatever you call them, just dig a hole. A small, deep hole, just big enough to lower one of their children on a rope, to fill the bucket with dirt.

The tiny village of Ilakaka, Madagascar had barely 40 residents before 1998. Then, a large deposit of sapphires was discovered along a nearby riverbed, and caught the eye of some Thai businessmen in the gem trade. Word got out, and Ilakaka swelled to tens of thousands of residents - the center of a sapphire boom, today the source of nearly 50% of all the sapphires in the world. Illegal miners mixed with large-scale operations, all operating under little or no regulation, in a wild-west atmosphere of potential fortunes, lawlessness, violence and hardship. In the years since, the easily-mined sapphire fields have been picked clean, and the remaining miners often work in deep holes, climbing far underground. Mining is also a family effort - according to an official study, of the 21,000 children living in the region, 19,000 belong to working families

Next time your kids bitch about going to school, show them the alternatives.