NAMIBIA!

While my experiences pale in comparison to some of you exploration geologists, I consider myself a fairly seasoned mineral traveler, having taken solo buying trips to a number of countries since I was 19. With that said, the level of difficulty I observed on Erongo was unlike anything I've yet seen in other countries.  Reaching Erongo (see below) is difficult enough, then it requires hikes that maintain a 40+ degree incline, sometimes obstructed by boulders and (once past the talus near the base) over sheer granite faces. Upon reaching the actual holes, the miners lower themselves into narrow mineralized pipes-- sometimes vertically hanging on ropes, other times narrow winding tubes.  They stay on the mountain for months on end.  Getting food, water or fuel requires either a supply run to the base (and back up) or further up the mountain to find water accumulated in previously excavated holes. I've seen lot of difficult work conditions, but this place left me wondering why anyone would even do this-- particularly when the same effort is required, whether or not any stones are actually found.  A friend answered this quite plainly: ''There are few jobs in the town.  If you don't take your studies seriously, you have few options.  Eventually you have to put bread on the table, and the mountain is the best bet.''  

Apart from the experiences and assistance with straightening out localities in my head that I gain from these trips, this is one reason I always insist on seeing the localities themselves, even if I know specimens will be few or nonexistent.  To see these labors first hand imparts a tremendous appreciation for the rocks, and an understanding of what it takes to mine them. One hears about spectacular ''alien eye fluorite'' and sees ''Ex.____ labels'', but trudging up the mountain to see the (from a ''mineral community'' standpoint) nameless miner digging for months on end only to find small bits, really puts things into perspective.  Even wholesale quality material represents the top several % of minerals from most areas, and actual fine specimens are an even more minuscule fraction still-- and I am not talking about only Erongo.       

I would like to note that while the Mineralogical Record's 2006 ''Erongo!'' issue graciously thanks the owners of the surrounding farms, they seem to make every effort to obstruct the local miners (many with legal mining claims) from reaching the mountain.  What this effectively means is that the miners must hop a fence then walk a minimum of 7 km in 100 F heat to the base of the mountain, then continue the trek upward-- in many cases carrying 50-60 lbs of gas, food, water, etc. After offering to pay the nearly $200 for a night at the lodge just for access to the road (and being refused ) I had the pleasure of experiencing this first hand (though my pack was just a little over 30 lbs). I repeatedly heard complaints from miners about this deliberate obstruction. And after hearing a lodge guard radio in that ''there is one 'white' guy and two black guys here,'' I gained some idea of the way things work. With this I segway to the original article, and maybe a criticism of the ''mineral culture.'' I noticed that it mainly cited collectors in big cities or neighboring countries-- the diggers themselves were largely overlooked as a source of knowledge, despite the author actually visiting the mountain. While these miners may not be peer reviewed or have Ph.D's, it's worth noting that most cited collectors and dealers do not go to the localities themselves. The miners are really the only way to know what species come from what areas, granted with some degree of verification, as misidentifications and exaggerations abound. A common problem in Africa though, is that most of the outdated surveys were done in colonial times, and I've noticed (particularly in the case of mineralogically important sites where the work is artisanal and not company/state run, regardless of country) that the experiences of the guys with the most up to date, first-hand knowledge (miners) are often overlooked in favor of foreigners with more limited limited first-hand experience. I've observed this in other places as well-- in fact the blue hemimorphite debacle at Ojuela was a direct result of ignoring locals in favor of people in the USA. To put this in perspective: the most experienced foreigners will be able to tell you what level of a mine a rock came from, based on a seeing a number of 2nd/ 3rd hand labels, whereas the miner might have been directly collecting on all those mine levels since he was 12. 

Anyway I hope you guys enjoy the rocks-- I tried to get as wide a variety as I could, and a couple things are actually somewhat unusual for the locality.