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In the Rough: Sierra
Leone's Diamond Industry
by Matt Brown
Before I ever heard about Sierra Leone, my vision of a diamond
miner was a jolly little dwarf whistling away down a torch-lit
shaft, wielding a pickaxe, and piling heaps of sparkling gems into
old mine carts. Then came the decade-long civil war in Sierra
Leone and I began to read reports that diamonds, “blood stones,”
were being used to fund human rights atrocities. Children, taken
from their villages at gun point, were being forced to work in the
rebel controlled mines. Two years after the war in Sierra Leone
ended, I visited the country to see if the diamond mining industry
resembled my Disney-influenced preconceptions or the bloody,
wartime media reports.
 Kenema,
the capital of Sierra Leone’s northwest diamond mining region, is
a modern version of an American Frontier town during the gold
rush. Every store front lining the dusty main street has paintings
of large, cartoon-like diamonds with signs advertising “Diamond
Buying Office,” luring villagers from miles around with promises
of easy money if they abandon their farming hoes for pickaxes and
dirt sifters. Figuring this was a good place to get familiar with
the diamond industry and hopefully see some of the mining in
action, I had hitchhiked the eight hours from Freetown, Sierra
Leone’s capital on the coast.
Rusted out shells of old tanks and makeshift tented camps in the
shadows of crumbling, bullet hole ridden buildings line the route
from Freetown to Kenema. In 2000, rebels from the Revolutionary
United Front (RUF) sought to take over the diamond mines around
Kenema. As they marched on the town, they left a wake of
destruction, burning villages to the ground and chopping off
villagers’ limbs. The rebels pushed their offensive to the
outskirts of Kenema, but were fended off by the Kamajor militia, a
people’s uprising opposed to the rebels. As a result, Kenema was
spared any major damage.
Youseff Barada was in Kenema at the time of the fighting. Like
many of the Lebanese merchants in town, Youseff’s electronic store
advertises diamond buying as one of its services. I found Youseff,
a friendly yet cautiously reserved heavy set man, at his desk in
the back of the store. He told me how he fled Kenema in a convoy
with 22 other Lebanese families just as the rebels reached the
edge of town.
In the absence of the town’s merchants, many stores were looted
and some Lebanese, such as Youseff, lost everything. In 2002,
President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah burned all the guns collected from
disarmed rebels in a ceremony in Freetown, marking the end of the
civil war. Soon afterward, Youseff returned to Kenema to rebuild
his business.
 I
was more interested in the diamond business, but Youseff was
hesitant to discuss it in his store. Instead he told me to meet
him at his office later that afternoon.
Past the high, barbwire metal door, past the three large African
men on the front terrace, past the security camera, I arrived at
the front door of Youseff’s office and he buzzed me in. He sat
behind a large desk, a small scale and a powerful lamp its only
adornments. I sat down across from him on a faded green sofa. To
my right was another large African man, Diaby, a Guinean.
After Orange Fanta was offered, he began the interview by
questioning me. What was I doing in Sierra Leone? Why was I asking
about the diamond industry? Who was I working for? After I
convinced him that I was just a curious traveler who wanted to
learn about the Sierra Leone diamond trade, he became less
suspicious of me and answered my questions.
As a legitimate diamond buyer, Youseff has a permit from the
Sierra Leone government that allows him to export raw, uncut
stones. He buys mainly from local villagers and sells them to
diamond cutters in Antwerp. As a middle man, his profit margin is
roughly eight percent. I asked him about the black market diamond
trade, but he refused to talk about it. “I am a licensed diamond
dealer,” he said suspiciously, “I don’t know about the illegal
trade.”
A knock on the door interrupted our conversation. Youseff buzzed
in a tall, skinny villager, who, upon entering, didn’t say a word,
but unwrapped a small square of white paper and produced two gems
for Youseff’s inspection. “Go on,” Youseff said to me. “Have a
look.”
To my untrained eye, the two small, uncut stones no larger than my
pinky fingernail, resembled shards of glass, murky bits of crystal
that I had trod on thousands of times without noticing. I turned
them around in my palm, trying to seem like an expert before
handing them back to Youseff, who then went to work. He examined
the stones closely under a small lens, weighed them, punched a few
numbers in a calculator, and then commenced haggling with the tall
African standing next to his desk.
Youseff’s final price, roughly 300 dollars, was too low and the
man carefully rewrapped his diamonds and left just as quietly as
he entered. “I see many diamonds every day. I can’t buy them all,”
Youseff said. “These lazy Africans, they are getting rich off me.”
 “Do
you think I can visit one of the mines?” I asked hopefully.
Youseff explained that he visits the mines from time to time, but
he had just returned from such a trip and wasn’t planning on going
back any time soon. “For 200 dollars I will take you,” said Diaby,
the large Guinean to my right breaking his silence. I politely
refused, and managed to get a few names of villages where diamond
mining takes place. “But,” warned Diaby, “Don’t visit without a
guide.”
I was weighing the risks of visiting the mines unguided with the
high costs of obtaining an escort on my way home from Youseff’s,
when I ran into Jim The Dodgy Diamond Dealer on Kenema’s main
street. He invited me up to his third story flat for tea on the
balcony overlooking the bustling street below. Jim, a Brit, traded
emeralds in Colombia before coming to Sierra Leone to deal
diamonds. Despite being self-professed as “dodgy,” Jim was
actually a bit of a nerd; not a shady mafia type, just an
overgrown rock collector.
Though he was a licensed diamond buyer, Jim was well connected in
Kenema’s small diamond buying community and he told me all about
the gem trade’s seedy underbelly. A couple weeks out of the year,
the Russian mafia comes to town to buy diamonds to launder money.
Because they have almost limitless cash with which to buy the
stones and can pay nearly any price, small-time traders like Jim
can’t compete. “For the whole week that they are here,” Jim said,
“Trading virtually shuts down and we go to the bars and get
pissed.”
In the months prior to September 11th, 2001, al-Qaida agents were
in Kenema laundering money which was used to fund the attacks in
the U.S. Jim said that around four million dollars is pumped into
Sierra Leone each week, yet almost nothing goes toward development
and the country continues to rank as one of the poorest in the
world.
I asked Jim about the individuals who do the mining. With the end
of the war and the disarmament of the rebels, the mines were
firmly in the hands of the villagers. Surely the villages where
mining takes place have profited from their mineral wealth? “The
Africans have no concept of tomorrow,” said Jim. “If one villager
finds a diamond and makes 100 dollars, instead of saving it and
looking for more, he generally stops working and drinks the money.
After a month, when the money runs out, he heads back to the mines
as poor as when he started.”
Another problem the mines create is a lack of farmers. With all
the able bodied men in the village out working the mines, there is
no one to raise the food. Sierra Leone, a tropical country that
could grow an abundance of food, has to rely on foreign aid to
feed its people.
Before leaving, I asked, “Is it possible to visit the mines?”
“There are some mines around the village of Tongo. I’ve never been
there myself. I wouldn’t go without a guide.”
The next morning I found myself sandwiched in the back of a
dilapidated six-seat Peugeot bush taxi with 11 other people, a
goat, and three angry chickens tied to the roof. The car labored
down horribly rutted muddy tracks cut through dense lush jungle
toward the village of Tongo. Three long hours later, we rambled
into the village, one dusty street lined with ramshackle wooden
kiosks and a few mud huts.
 As
I alighted the bush taxi in the middle of the town, I immediately
felt out of place. All of the villagers’ stares were on the lone
white guy in town; not curious stares, but the kind that said,
“You’re not welcome here.” This problem, I realized, could have
been avoided had I been with a guide. A guide could have also
helped with the other little problem—that I didn’t have a clue
where the mines were. The diamonds, in fact, were not being
extracted right from the middle of town as I had hoped.
Had I dallied longer than two minutes in Tongo, I would have
overstayed my warm welcome. I chose a direction north of town and
followed a path into the bush. After ten minutes of walking, I
came to a little hill. To my left, about 100 meters away, I could
see a large manmade lake filled with muddy water. Around the edge,
men stood knee deep in the water sifting through the dirt; diamond
miners.
I approached the mine like one would approach a hyena, if for some
reason, one had a strong desire to see a hyena at really close
range. As I slowly neared the lake, I could see the men were
working in groups of about ten, each stationed at intervals along
the edge.
I got to within 20 meters of one group of men before someone
noticed me and came over. My heart racing, he told me in stern
Pidgin English that I was in the wrong place and couldn’t stay.
Diplomacy has always been one of my best skills, and somehow, I
managed to smooth talk the miner.
Minutes later, I was at the water’s edge watching the mining
operation take place. One man shoveled a load of dirt into
another’s sifter, who would shake it around in the water until the
silt filtered out leaving behind the larger stones.
The men were dressed in ratty, torn clothing, most of them
shirtless, and they laughed and joked while they worked. Had it
been two years ago, a rebel soldier with an AK47 would have been
watching their every move. But these men seemed happy, content to
be laboring in the hot sun, looking for that one stone that could
buy them and their friends a month’s worth of palm wine.
I watched the men toiling away until the evening, when they
started to head back to Tongo. Walking back behind a group of
jolly diamond miners, pickaxes and shovels flung over their
shoulders, I could just make out them whistling a merry tune on
their way home from a hard day’s work.
© Matt Brown, 2004
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