A new spessartite discovery by the Serengeti...

Tuesday 12 February 2008

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In October 2007, my brother Mark called while I was travelling in Europe to let me know he suspected that Tanzania was unveiling yet another gem deposit. "I think we're on top of something big again. An important spessartite discovery seems to have taken place in the northern part of the country". His call came right after a few Maasai herdsmen had popped by our Arusha office. But their information was vague and needed to be confirmed...

Confirmation came quickly. The new spessartites came from Loliondo, close to Serengeti National Park and only 7 kilometers away from the Kenyan border. A few years ago, aquamarines had been found and briefly mined in that area.

Rough spessartite garnet

Mark had spent ten exhausting days in the bush in August purchasing what is now believed to be the most important spinel discovery recorded. At that time he had imagined he would be gone a couple of days and had packed a small bag accordingly. Instead he had ended up spending ten days purchasing spinel in Mahenge area. And here we were again. But before we could really think about organizing a new buying trip, the staircase of our office building filled up with Maasai waiting to show us their spessartite garnets. These men had left their cattle at the village in order to rush to the new find. News can travel very quickly in Maasailand... Not one of these Maasai had ever heard of spessartite prior to the discovery. Most had never even handled a gem before. Mark rapidly identified the stones and told the first Maasai that these orange gems were spessartite garnets. Within hours, Maasai were pouring into our office trying to sell their "special types", "space types", "spacetites", "spestites"...

Cut spessartite garnet

A 12 cts cut spessartite garnet. One of the first spessartites to have been cut from this discovery

As had been the case with the spinel discovery, the spessartites attracted amateur prospectors from all over. Much to our amusement, one of our former watchmen, a Maasai himself, walked into our office one day with a bag full of various sized spessartites. He and plenty of other self-appointed brokers have no experience. Nice clean gems are often mixed with poorly crystallized or unclean material. Prices often need some adjustment...

Spessartite garnet crystal

A spessartite crystal weighing a bit under a kilogram... Spessartite crystals of more than a kilo have been found

Generally speaking, the colors of the Loliondo spessartites are very lively. They are as nice as the Nigerian material. Big pieces are rare, especially the clean ones. A very large proportion (99%) of these spessartites are included and are perfect material for bead or cabochon.

Spessartite garnet crystal