Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market

One of my favorite projects at work is the Ûiba Ôas Crystals Market, or technically the Ûiba Ôas Small Scale Miners’ Coöperative.  I wrote a bit about them when I reported on the SSC-DF Handing Over Ceremony back in August 2015.  Since then, I’ve created a website for them, and a Facebook page.  (Please like them on Facebook!  And if you know of a free location to host a website with more features and equal ease-of use as Blogspot, please let me know.  It would be great to upgrade them.)

The people of what is now Ûiba Ôas first came to the attention of my foundation in about 2004, when Petra saw them sitting by the side of the big B2 highway.  They would put a cloth or some cardboard on the ground, or set up a table, rig up some sort of shade, and sit there by the road hoping someone would stop and look at what they had displayed on their table or cardboard.  Petra did stop, and saw the beautiful crystals and semi-precious stones the people had mined from the rocks and mountains in the area, laid out on that cardboard or table.

Smoky quartz

She also found a willingness to work, to learn and to change things up a bit, so she set to work herself.  She offered business trainings, including in marketing and selling to tourists.  She sought out grant money, and helped them get funding for a permanent market.  They had to work with the national Ministry of Lands and the elected local councils and traditional tribal leaders to get rights to a plot of land.  With the help of the U.S. Embassy in Namibia, the European Union, Rössing Uranium and other donors, they were able to construct a beautiful marketplace.  The architect, Nina Maritz, offered the idea of using indigenous rocks held in wire fencing as the primary building material, and the finished structure is beautiful.  It stands out but fits in, and serves its purpose very ably.

Office on left; first of three selling rooms on right.

The members of the coöp are all or almost all from the Damara tribe.  They speak Damara-Nama, one of the click-and-pop languages, and many speak Afrikaans, often as their primary language.  A lot of them also speak English with various degrees of fluency.  The name they chose for their group, Ûiba Ôas, means 'looking for a living' or 'seeking a livelihood.'  Pretty good, I think.  You have to pronounce it through your nose because of those accent marks, but the name itself contains no clicks or pops.  All or almost all of the miners grew up around the Spitzkoppe mountain, which is about 40 kilometers outside the town of Usakos, on the edge of the semi-arid savannah as it begins to shade into the Namib desert.

Traditional Damara dress - the men don't have a traditional outfit, poor things.

Diana, the chairperson of the coöp, wasn’t able to tell me how long her people have been mining stones in the area, but she did say she remembers her grandmother heading out to the mountain with hammer and chisel.  Her grandmother was a miner from girlhood, so we figure the people have been miners for at least 80 years and more likely 100 or more.  They once dug on Spitzkoppe itself, but it is now a protected site – there are rock paintings about 30,000 years old there, painted by the San people – so activity has moved to the smaller Klein Spitzkoppe nearby.

Diana with her well-bundled new baby, Rain Patience.
You need a lot of patience here if you're hoping for rain.

The mountains are granite, and they ‘grow’ crystals of many kinds, including aquamarines, a beryl, and many kinds of quartz.  Purple quartz is what we call amethyst, and then there are rose, smoky, silver, clear and other colors.  They also collect minerals like flourite, tourmaline and dioptase and many others.

and garnets

Typically men do the mining out on the mountain, and women do the selling down by the highway, but that’s not 100% consistent.  At the market, you’ll find raw rocks, sometimes called specimens or samples, mostly mined by someone in the seller’s family, but some coming from outside the immediate area from other small-scale miners.  Sometime Ûiba Ôas members will take particular rocks to Swakopmund to have them cut and polished, ready for setting in jewelry.  They also buy pendants and other jewelry from wholesalers, and buy and make crafts like woodcarvings and mobiles made from old soda cans (they’re beautiful!), and sell all of those at their stalls.

The hearts, elephants, guinea fowl etc. were cut from soft-drink cans and painted.

Just so cute.

Each member of the mining coöp has the right to rent a stall in the market building.  Members pay a small percentage of their monthly sales as rent.  Neither the members nor the coöp are getting rich, but the business is growing and they are implementing plans for further expansion.  Thanks to the Namibian Social Security Commission Development Fund, which seeks to provide capital for projects that will reduce poverty and expand employment, and the Rössing Foundation, the coöperative was able to purchase a stone cutting-and-polishing machine and the solar panels to power it recently, and send two members for training on how to use it.  This will allow them to add value to their raw stones – once cut, polished and mounted, the stones can sell for three times or more the price of the uncut stone.  They are now considering funding the purchase of slicing and drilling machines, and training more members.

Polished stones, acquired elsewhere.  Margins are better if you can
polish your stones yourself, eliminating a middle man or two.

There’s a U.S. organization called Kickin’ Back that’s recently gotten interested in Ûiba Ôas, and is raising funds for construction of a soccer field for the community.  The Ûiba Ôas Aqua-Stars (named for aquamarines, not for the area’s almost non-existent water), the community soccer team, have performed very well in local tournaments.  The team player-coach, Gabriël, is also the coöp’s deputy chairperson, and he is a man of impressive work ethic and strategic smarts.  Over time, Kickin’ Back may be able to assist with expansion of the physical site to allow for more income-generating activities, which would be great.  If you want to support the project, let Kickin’ Back know.

Aislinn, Donna and Kieran of Kickin' Back donated 10,000 litres of water
to Gerhard, Gabriël and Patricia of Ûiba Ôas, with Lysias of RF watching.

Gabriël took us on a prospecting walk; everyone found at least a quartz or two.

Petra's friend Thomas introduced Kickin’ Back to Ûiba Ôas, and he is also working to bring a member of the Namibian Hydrogeologists’ Association to the area to hunt for a water source.  Residents currently have no running water in their homes, and two attempts at drilling boreholes have been unsuccessful.  People have to buy water in 25-litre cans.  Another of Thomas’s contacts is looking into the possibility of developing a solar-power grid.  People who have electricity here get a limited supply from batteries, like car batteries, and many do without.

A house near the crystals market

There’s a lot more to say about Ûiba Ôas, but this is a lot already.  So I’ll close now, and maybe add more in future posts.  I am honored and pleased to know these people, and have a chance to help them build on the hard work they have done and do every day, and on the efforts of Petra, many funders and others.

Amethyst.  I love the shiny rocks.