The beauty of Africa

What a ride the last ten days have been! Once the paperwork cleared last Friday morning, I called my handyman Steve, and he and I went for the drums of rock. When we got back to the house with them, I rounded up my son and we started unloading.

That's not as simple as it sounds. Each drum weighed about 600 pounds, and even with three of us there was no way to move them full. So we had to find another way.

Fortunately, the mine packed everything very well. All the rocks were in bags of about 50 pounds, marked and clearly labeled. They were packed in "layers" in the drums, so that we could take out two layers of three bags each, and have a relatively light load in the drum.

So that is what we did. We partially unloaded the first drum, moved it to the driveway, and then put the top layers from the next drum into it. At the end, we had the four drums in the driveway with the bags in them, just not in the same order in which they were packed.

But they couldn't stay in the drums in the driveway. And since it was clear that the entire shipment was handled multiple times by Customs in both South Africa and the US, I wanted to go through everything and be sure of what I have.

So I carefully unpacked the bags, weighed the rocks in each one, and moved them all to the back yard with a wheelbarrow. From there I put them into milk crates on shelves in the shade house. I managed to get everything moved by Sunday evening. My poor back!

Before I could cut the first slab, of course, trouble intervened. The saw blade I was using separated in a neat circle around the bushings that hold it on the arbor.

Thank goodness I order from Lopacki. I called on Monday morning and spoke to Mr. Lopacki himself, and on Wednesday at noon I had a new blade at no charge. So then I could start slabbing.

I'm cutting some of the neatest material. I'm trying to cut a little bit of everything for the show this weekend, but I'm not going to be able to get it done. I've cut some Coral Jasper and some Kalahari picture jasper and right now I'm working on some Licorice Jasper. Oh, and some gorgeous Unakite. I've seen a lot of Unakite that's kind of washed out or pastel looking, but this is bright green and almost hot pink. It's all such great stuff.

For all my friends in central Florida, this weekend I'll be at the Central Florida Gem & Mineral Show. Stop by and have a look at the beauty of Africa.

Almost there........

I'm going to backtrack a little here. I've been talking about the shipment of rock I'm getting from Africa, but not how that whole thing got started. Someone asked me today how on earth I got into this, so I may as well go back to the beginning.

Back in the early 1990s, I traveled to South Africa four consecutive years to hunt and fish and gather information for stories. (As a writer, I’m always looking for something new to write about.)

Looking back over a distance of 15 or so years, I can’t remember why we ended up where we were, but we stopped by a wholesale gemstone dealer one afternoon. On the grass behind the building were piles of malachite and sodalite about 6 feet across and 3 feet high, pieces from fist-sized to the size of a flagstone, all just in big heaps.

I’ve loved both stones ever since, and in fact that afternoon bought gemstone strands of both. Little did I know at the time how much those piles were worth, or how impossible it would be to get malachite out of Africa today!

Several months ago, I made a connection through my fiance to the wife of one of his colleagues. She's from Kenya, and worked there as a prospector for many years. Somehow the three of us hatched the idea of importing a shipment of lapidary rock from northern Africa for sale here in the states.

We weren't able to get anything set up from northern Africa, so I started digging around and looking for my own sources.After many hours of research, and many e-mails, I narrowed my potential suppliers down to three, and then to two, and finally to one. I still may order from the second one, but one metric ton of rock at a time is enough!

I formally placed my order today--August 6--and it should be here around the middle of September. The rock will arrive in four 55-gallon drums, which will take up residence in my driveway until I can get them sorted out! Meanwhile I’ve been scrounging milk crates and every other hard plastic basket I can find so I can stack the rock on shelves in my shade house.

I've already written about the chrysocolla. I’ll also be getting blue lace agate (some with druzy), red aventurine, Orange River Voorsite chalcedony, 17 different jaspers, sodalite (couldn’t pass that one up), banded jasper matrix with tiger eye, and unakite. Malachite is unavailable due to the political situation in southern Africa at this time. :-(

But, the order is placed, the wire transfer goes out tomorrow, and the rock should be on the way in the next few days. I'll start putting it on line sometime around the end of September, both as rough and as slabs.