The DRC, as big as Europe, and still so unexplored

There are countries you carry within you. The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of them for me.

My family has known this country since the 1970s. In the 1980s and 90s, we even had an airline, Nord Atlas planes that flew the skies of Kasaï to Kinshasa. Those planes, buyers from that era still remember them. I arrived there in 2002, aged 25, in Tshikapa. My first bush purchases. My first buying counter. My family had built Tshikapa's first cold rooms and its first structured buying counters. I learned on the job, stone after stone, seller after seller. It was a wonderful time.

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A country as big as Europe

The DRC is a country numbers struggle to make real. As big as Western Europe. Crossed by the Congo, the world's second-largest river by discharge. An equatorial forest covering millions of square kilometres. And beneath that soil, riches that have barely been touched.

For diamonds, the country's heart beats in the Kasaï provinces. Kasaï-Oriental, whose capital is Mbuji-Mayi. Kasaï-Occidental, whose capital is Kananga. Two sister provinces, two different realities.

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The ethnic groups, ancestral rivalries, shared work

In the Kasaï, you find the Luba (or Baluba), the dominant group around Mbuji-Mayi, who speak Tshiluba and whose presence has shaped the region for centuries. The Lulua, present in Tshikapa and around Kananga, with whom the Luba share a complex history of deep tensions dating back to independence. The Tshokwe (or Tchokwé), who occupy the border areas toward Angola, people of the forest and the river who know every bend. The Lunda, the Songye, and many others.

On the diamond ground, all these ethnic groups worked side by side. Ancestral quarrels, glances that didn't meet, words that could quickly turn sour. But in the end, everyone worked together. Diamonds had that kind of magic: they put people in the same room who, under other circumstances, might never have sat at the same table. Trade created a truce. Not always without tension. But a real truce. That was the local folklore, and I loved it.

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Mbuji-Mayi, the city awaiting its rebirth

Mbuji-Mayi is home to MIBA, the Société Minière de Bakwanga, founded in 1961. At its peak, it produced 80% of the world's industrial diamonds. Today, it has been awaiting its rebirth for twenty years, the funds promised by the government still slow to arrive.

But what you need to understand about Mbuji-Mayi is that diamonds didn't come only from industrial kimberlites. Diggers, divers, people of the ground, found diamonds in the alluvial deposits that erosion had carried from the primary pipes over millions of years. Diamonds that had made their own journey, carried by rivers, deposited in gravel, waiting to be found.

And sometimes it was even simpler than that. After heavy rains, after the earth shifted, after erosion did its work again, residents of Mbuji-Mayi found diamonds on their own plot of land, beneath their feet. The kimberlite was right there, just below. Stones rose to the surface. This country's wealth is beyond comprehension.

Mbuji-Mayi stones are often large. Many are fluorescent. Others are coated or skinned, covered in an opaque layer that hides their true quality. Once cut, these stones sometimes deliver wonderful surprises. 5% of production is gem quality, and that 5% represents 90% of the total value. Near the city, Loja produces a beautiful diamond, sometimes coloured, a source only ground buyers know about.

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Tshikapa, my town, my school

Tshikapa is where I learned what books never could have taught me.

The Tshikapa river, the Chicapa on the Angolan side, rises in the highlands of Lunda Sul in Angola and flows north to join the Kasai. It's this same river that carried diamonds from the Angolan highlands into the Congolese gravels.

Tshikapa stones come from the same sources as Angola's. Same original kimberlites, same alluvial journey. But the largest diamonds got caught along the way, trapped in walls, basins, river pockets held back by rocks. The closer you get to Congo, the smaller the stones. Nature sorted everything before we did.

What Tshikapa lacks in size, it makes up for in quality. Exceptional commercial colours, highly sought after by buyers from Surat, India. Clean whites, light yellows, stones with vivid brilliance.

I bought from sellers, from diggers, from those who came to present their stones wrapped in newspaper, eyes shining. Every transaction was a negotiation, a reading of the man across from you as much as the stone in your hand.

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The villages, the rivers, the borders, and Kisangani

Around Tshikapa, small villages the big buyers don't know: Kamonia, Kamako on the Angolan border. Names that appear on no international diamond map, but that those who lived there know by heart.

To the north, toward the Central African Republic, Kisangani deserves a special mention. The city produces a diamond that resembles CAR's, without being it. Its distinctive trait: a green colour, from bottle green to dark green, and shapes that are a pleasure for cutters. Beautiful rounds to saw, perfect for cutters who know what they're looking at.

But Kisangani was also a magical place for another reason: it yielded pinks and blues. Fancy colours in a region no one expected them from. Another of those surprises only the field reveals.

Some Kisangani stones came out commercial white to collection white. Others revealed lower colours once cut. Only a small group of traders and manufacturers, in Antwerp and elsewhere, knew how to read these stones at their true value. The others were out of the game on the market. That ability to read a stone, that distinction between what a stone promises and what it delivers, is exactly what separates a real diamond dealer from an ordinary buyer. And for Kisangani, that's still true today.

To the east, beautiful diamonds too. South of Kinshasa, in Bandundu, scattered production, often very small sizes, but present. The DRC is full of treasures still undiscovered.

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The CNE, then the CEEC

Everything went through the CNE, the Centre National d'Expertise, which oversaw licensed buying counters, accompanied Ministry of Mines agents and certified exports. Since 2009, it has been replaced by the CEEC, Centre d'Expertise, d'Évaluation et de Certification. Agents would arrive at the counters, check, stamp, accompany each parcel. An imperfect system, like any system in a country this size. But a system that existed and that worked.

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Bush life

We lived without electricity. Tropical nights broken by torrential rain. Generators that broke down at the worst moments. Mosquito nets, kerosene lamps.

And people. Incredible people. Diggers with stories I could never fully tell. Men who had lost everything in the war and were rebuilding their lives carat by carat.

The DRC taught me patience. It taught me that value isn't always visible at first glance. It taught me that diamonds are as much a matter of people as of stones.

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