Tanzania: Journal Entry
Summer 1997 or so...

AFRICA, (Nairobi) -- Customs is easy as I walk through nonchalantly. With 60K in my pockets I find I can walk right past the agents who are asking questions and looking through bags by acting like I know where I'm going. I change some money into Shillings and catch a taxi to the Fairview in the evening.

Not much happening in Kenya like before. After one day of seeing several old suppliers and not finding much, I take the shuttle to Tanzania. It's about a five-hour journey from Nairobi to Arusha, crossing the border to Namanga. A two lane tarmac full of potholes, dry high plains most of the year. Hard to imagine all the wild animals surviving on such terrain but I see small deer (dik diks), gazelle, zebra, wild asses, and giraffe along the way. I'm feeling pretty good. Many dealers are expecting me.

Since Tanzania opened its border with Kenya a few years ago, it has become the place to buy gems. It was very difficult before, to go there. You had to fly and it wasn't so easy to buy, to find dealers or to get gems out. Tanzanite, tsavorite, chrome tourmaline, sapphire and a large variety of garnet, mostly all rough, was smuggled into Nairobi or Mombasa on the coast. That's where I used to work until the mid 90s.

I check into the Arusha Hotel right in the center of town and get a room on the second floor. Still a few hours left in the day so I head out to see some of my contacts. Tanzinite prices have been fluctuating a lot and I'm not sure what to expect .I see a few dealers, look at some parcels of rough, some cut stones. Nothing so exciting. They say "come by tomorrow" I buy nothing.

Back to my room and rest a bit. I had dinner and some beers at a small Indian restaurant, go back to my room, read, write some post cards and fall asleep. I get up and head out. All day I walk from office to office. The dealers who said, "come back" say: "come back again" and I feel like a streetwalker in a dusty run down town. It's so frustrating not finding any beautiful goods.

By the mid 90's so many American dealers are coming here, it's getting harder and harder to buy. No one seems to enjoy a buying trip. Mediocre accommodation, lousy food, really difficult buying and a dangerous and corrupt environment all make it pretty intense. It's not until you get on the plane and it takes off that you can relax and breathe a sigh of relief. Nowadays I don't get that happy feeling knowing that I've done a great job. Often I feel I've paid too much and won't be able to make much profit. Still, I keep coming back two, three, four times a year. Back to the hotel. I did buy some rough chrome tourmaline, rhodolite garnet and malaya. I meet a fellow American dealer and we go out for dinner and drinks at my favorite place, Mezaluna, a pizzeria run by an Italian guy.

Tuckered out, I decide to go to bed. I was awakened at 1:00 AM by a loud knock on my hotel door. With cash and gems in the room I apprehensively opened the door (although thieves usually don't announce their presence with a knock). An imposing East African man with a gun in his belt was standing at the door. He had just arrived from the Merclani mines, and he told me had tanzanites to sell. We laid our dozens of deep blue gems on the table. I selected the most promising ones. It was too dark in the room for me to trust the color, so I agreed to meet him in the morning and finalize the deal.

Next day he's back and I get the best buy of the trip. I get some killers stones. I'll have to re-cut almost everything, but these stones are stunning and worth it. After four days in Tanzania I've collected about $250K of rough and cut stones. I now have to get them back to Kenya and do an official export from there. I always hand carry the goods from East Africa as there are too many instances of lost or stolen shipments. So I have to smuggle the gems across the border. I pay $500 to a qualified taxi driver/smuggler. He wads up my plastic bags full of gems in an old cloth rag and stuffs them under the spare tire in his trunk.

We drive out of Arusha on a sunny afternoon. As we get closer to the border crossing I feel myself getting more and more nervous. I know from experience how officious the custom agents are. We walk into the small border post and fill out our departure cards, show our passports, answer a bunch of questions and the government agent is sent out to our car to check us out. He looks in the car and then has my driver open the trunk! I am about to die! He rummages around and manages not to lift the spare tire, closes the trunk lid and walks back into the building after speaking in Swahili to the driver.

Then, out comes a gentleman, introduced to me as the Chief Inspector. He proceeds to get into the front seat. I hop in the back, sweating bullets, figuring we are somehow in deep trouble. But, they lift the gate and we pass through into Kenya. It takes me about a half hour to figure out that the man is the Chief Inspector of the Railroad and needs a ride into Nairobi. What a relief.

We get to the city safely, dodging potholes, passing cars and wild asses. Next day I arrange for one of my dealers to arrange the export. A man from the Department of Mines comes to the office, looks at the gems, declares a favorable value, seals the parcel with melted wax, string and flat wire, hands us a stack of paperwork and we pay him a few hundred dollars.

At the airport I take the paperwork and parcel to the customers office and finally get everything okayed and go through normal customs and finally one last search before boarding the jet for London. What a relief to sit down on the plane and fly to Europe. It's been a long week. I order a double Scotch, lean my seat back and relax thinking of getting back to my family in California.

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