Namibia has a number of minerals and precious gemstones that are extracted from some of its ancient mountain ranges and deep underground mine shafts. One day we stopped in at a group of rock vendors near the Spitzkoppe Mountains to see what they had. There were numerous beautiful black tourmaline crystals (also known as schorl), some of them combined with beryl minerals such as aquamarine. An example of that can be seen in the lower right, where an inch-long pale blue aquamarine crystal is embedded at a right angle to two larger black tourmalines. I bought that piece for the low price of about USD $6.

The two larger pieces were bought the next day when we returned a second time. Every vendor, most of whom were Damara women of various ages, wanted us to buy something from them. Of course that is impossible for the average tourist to do, and inevitably some people were going to be disappointed. However some of the women used an approach to gain our interest that I haven’t really experienced before, which was to use the request for food in trade, rather than money.

We were going to be leaving Namibia the next day to catch a flight back to Cape Town and then later to the United States, and we had unused food supplies that we had bought that we were pondering what to do with. Trading that food for semiprecious gems seemed like a good idea for all involved, so that night we packed it all up into a couple of bags and readied ourselves to drop back in the next morning. I wanted to limit my trade to something I really wanted, so I made a point of not committing to any vendor too quickly and at least briefly looking at each booth to see what was appealing.

Eventually my eye settled on a piece of crystal-encrusted rock with three different minerals on it. Two are clear quartz and white feldspar, and the third may be green and yellow-tinted fluorite, although I am not fully sure of that. The old woman who was the booth owner spoke nearly no English, so one of the younger women nearby translated our negotiations into the Damara click language and back. The woman really wanted to sell me both pieces even though I only wanted to carry one home. The price for the two pieces started at N $800 (about US $66) but through a combination of wrangling and food trading I got it down to N $400 (US $33) plus a couple of bags of food, including canned tuna, oatmeal, chips, dried fruit, nuts, cookies, three oranges, and a single banana. Oh, and a pair of shorts that my friend Hayes didn’t want anymore. (“Good quality” said the old woman via the translator.) They seemed pleased, and so was I.

Since I was the only customer in the shops at that time, our deal-making gathered a small crowd of interested onlookers with little else to do. I thought that there was plenty of food to go around, and that some of the food was perhaps not desirable to the old woman and that maybe she could give some of the items she didn’t want to other people as a gesture of goodwill or something. I was bluntly told, “That’s not the way it works.” Okay then, keep all the food and the shorts for yourself then, doesn’t bother me. I took my two pieces of crystal and went on with my day, and presumably they ate oatmeal with tuna fish and raisins for breakfast the next day. Just today, after taking this photo, on a whim I tried piecing the two parts together, and found that they do indeed fit with each-other. Maybe that was why the woman wanted me to buy both? Combined they weigh about 5 lbs/2.2 kg, but I checked a second bag into the airline with them so as not to run over the weight limits. Anyway, it was an interesting experience and now comes with a fun story.