A Girl’s best friend
1
Introduction “Will I be able to buy some diamonds?” asked Sandra. John Smith just laughed “Forget it Sandra” he said “That place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
They were sitting in Smith’s office on a Sunday morning. The sign on the door read “John Smith – Investigations” although no one was quite sure what he investigated. Sandra knew Smith had been a security officer in Namibia for a few years before he moved to Cape Town. Today she wanted information from him about the closed and secretive town of Oranjemund on the border between South Africa and Namibia.
5
Girl’s best friend Some time ago, Smith had approached Sandra through a “friend of a friend”, asking for advice about a client who needed to get married urgently to a rich young woman.
But the client had a problem – he was already married to someone else. After hearing the facts of the case, Sandra suggested an ingenious solution. Smith had never forgotten her advice. He sent Sandra a jeweller’s tray of diamond rings as a thank-you. A year later when the Hard Livings gang tried to set up a protection racket in the mall, John Smith sent a man with a gun.
The man sat quietly at the boutique’s entrance for a few days, and the gangsters took note. The boutique was not bothered. .
Girl’s best friend Today the two are enjoying their coffees and Sandra is telling John about the Meyer sisters, twins who are getting married in their home town of Oranjemund, the diamond mining town at the mouth of the Orange River, where their father is a general manager. The sisters have had their first and second dress fittings and Sandra is flying there next Friday to dress the brides for their combined wedding. She asks Smith whether the legends of diamonds lying scattered on the beaches in Namibia are true.
Girl’s best friend Smith says they are. In 1907 a railway worker on his day off at the beach picked up a raw diamond lying in the sand. This find led to a diamond rush with hundreds of prospectors and miners scraping diamonds out of the sands and crevices, and taking pot shots at each other.
The government stepped in and quickly declared a vast region of Namibia's coast and desert to be a Sperrgebiet (prohibited area), patrolled by armed troops and accessible only to persons with authorised mining licences.
Girl’s best friend Today Namibia and De Beers Consolidated Diamond Mines (Namdeb) jointly operate and control diamond mining in the Sperrgebiet. But you won’t find loose diamonds lying in the beach sand and in the bedrock crevices any more. Namdeb uses open cast mining to harvest the gems. They scrape off the top layer of beach sand and below lie rough diamonds in their thousands.
“But where did the diamonds come from?” Sandra asked. It was a freak of nature, Smith said. Billions of years ago pressures in volcanoes deep underground created a plastic-like geological soup full of diamonds called Kimberlite. The semi-liquid rock was forced to the surface through weaknesses in the earth’s crust.
4
Girl’s best friend The rock cooled down into solid pipes. Southern Africa has been blessed with many kimberlite pipes. The bestknown are in Kimberley and Cullinan in South Africa. The mighty Orange River and its tributaries, drains a huge area of inland Southern Africa from east to west. The river water has run over the kimberlite pipes for billions of years and pushed millions of diamonds along the river beds to the mouth of the river and then into the Atlantic Ocean.
The strong Benguela current, storms and changes in sea level over the millennia distributed the diamonds along the Namibian sea shore. The percentage of highquality gems recovered in the Sperrgebiet is very high, Smith said. The weaker faulted diamonds are destroyed by river and ocean, wind and weather.
Girl’s best friend With some trepidation Sandra climbed into the 8seater propellor driven airplane at Cape Town airport. The interior looked really old. The rear of the plane was used to store luggage - there was no luggage compartment- and Sandra noted cases of wine, bags of vegetables and even a basket of pigeons being loaded.
The flight itself was interesting with views of rocky coastlines and deserted beaches as they flew further north. Then suddenly a bird started flying around inside the aircraft cabin. Fortunately, the stewardess was able to calm the shrieking passengers and with Sandra’s help, to corner the bird and wrap it in a tea towel. Sandra noted it was a pigeon.
Girl’s best friend An hour later they landed safely at Oranjemund. The town is closed to the general public and the company owns everything including the school. You need to have a good reason and a permit to enter. Sandra was x-rayed and her belongings searched before she could pass through the security turnstile to leave the airport.
She was amazed to see an Oryx in the main street, apparently a common sight.
Driving into the town, Sandra had a strong sense of being in a time capsule. Some of the buildings and houses date from the early founding days of the 1940s and 1950s.
Girl’s best friend At dinner that evening she learned that with only 4000 inhabitants, Oranjemund has a school, a supermarket, a hospital, and six churches. And a surprising number of hobby and sports clubs. The brochure at her guesthouse listed golf, model airplanes, darts, rugby, two computer clubs, racing pigeons and even jukskei. The weddings went off as expected, with the normal last-minute panics, laughter, tears and bad jokes. The entire town population seemed to be at the church, before moving off to the emerald green golf club in the desert for the twins’ reception.
Girls best friend On Sunday morning her driver took her on a circuit round the town past the maintenance sheds where the giant mine operations vehicles are repaired and serviced. Sandra marvelled at these bizarre vehicles ten times her height. She didn’t see any diamonds, however. The mining operations are located well out of town, and surrounded by impenetrable security. She was x-rayed and her belongings searched again before she passed through the security turnstile at the airport.
Girl’s best friend A week later she was in her office when John Smith appeared at the door. “How was Namibia?” he asked “Did you find any diamonds?” “No, of course I didn’t,” said Sandra. “You were right about the security”. Smith winked and tossed a small muslin bag onto her desk. “How about these?” he said. The bag contained two small uncut diamonds. “Where on earth did you get them?” asked Sandra, nonplussed.
“Well, you see”, said Smith, “I have a contact in Oranjemund who keeps racing pigeons. So, I send him a few of my own pigeons on the company ‘plane from time to time, and sometimes the birds fly back with a little gift”. Sandra sat there with her mouth open. The pigeons were on the plane! Smith winked again. “As I always say” he smiled “There’s no security system that can’t be broken!”
https://www.amazon. com/-/e/B09PTLB977