Sapphires - another good friend of ladies

A friend, Bayi (not a baby nor a Singh though we have yet to meet) forwarded to me this interesting information on Sapphires:

When I think of sapphires, the bright blue stones come to mind, but they actually run the whole spectrum of the rainbow.

Boston.com shows us sapphire mining in Ilakaka, Madagascar. In the big open pits, a human chain moves the dirt(ore) up to the top by way of a human chain, with shovels. About as labor intensive as it gets.

The independent, freelancers, wildcatters, whatever you call them, just dig a hole. A small, deep hole, just big enough to lower one of their children on a rope, to fill the bucket with dirt.
The tiny village of Ilakaka, Madagascar had barely 40 residents before 1998. Then, a large deposit of sapphires was discovered along a nearby riverbed, and caught the eye of some Thai businessmen in the gem trade. Word got out, and Ilakaka swelled to tens of thousands of residents - the center of a sapphire boom, today the source of nearly 50% of all the sapphires in the world. Illegal miners mixed with large-scale operations, all operating under little or no regulation, in a wild-west atmosphere of potential fortunes, lawlessness, violence and hardship. In the years since, the easily-mined sapphire fields have been picked clean, and the remaining miners often work in deep holes, climbing far underground. Mining is also a family effort - according to an official study, of the 21,000 children living in the region, 19,000 belong to working families
Boston.com shows us sapphire mining in Ilakaka, Madagascar.

In the big open pits, a human chain moves the dirt(ore) up to the top by way of a human chain, with shovels. About as labor intensive as it gets.

The independent, freelancers, wildcatters, whatever you call them, just dig a hole. A small, deep hole, just big enough to lower one of their children on a rope, to fill the bucket with dirt.

I cannot help comparing this with tin mining. My mother-in-law used to be a dulang washer and the primitive method used then was quite similar to what is shown in the picture, only difference being using water to wash off lighter materials, leaving behind the heavier tin deposits at the bottom of the dulang (wok-shaped).

Having upgraded many years ago, at the factory, she has conveyor belts doing what the human chain is doing as shown. On our recent visit to the last tin dredge near Tg. Tuallang, I found the tin dredge to be a bigger version of an amang factory. Almost all the different machines found in the factory can be seen in a bigger version in the dredge. I was left with the impression that tin must have been a very valuable mineral then to have such heavy investments on such heavy machinery to extract it. If I remember correctly, according to Steven, a tin dredge weighs some 4,000 tons of metal! I remember roughly it is equivalent to at least a few million ringgits at today's iron ore price! My wife used to say it sarcastically, the apparent reason Britain came up with the term 'Commonwealth' to call her former colonies.