I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised that this museum seems to focus on the positive outcomes of diamond mining (ooh! pretty shiny things!) instead of the negative (blood, price jacking, keeping the poor man down, &c.), but it’s still disheartening.
I actually met a diamond trader when I was in South Africa. He was very kind, and his family was lovely — two perfect blonde kids, two perfect little dogs, a beautiful wife who made delicious food for us. That said, I was visiting as a white American with a group of university students. While I really appreciated the fact that he welcomed us into his home, a couple of things about the situation made it quite difficult for me to maintain a polite demeanor at times. First, when he was telling us about buying a gold mine in Zimbabwe, he actually said the phrase “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Secondly, his gigantic and beautiful house was in a gated community and had an entire wall made of glass. There was some sort of panic button that, when pressed, would essentially cause a wall of steel to drop down in front of that wall and keep his family safe from the scary poor people who might have gotten into the gated community. Seriously.
I’ve said this before, but: if anyone ever tries to buy me a diamond again, I will know that they don’t know me well enough to marry me.
