The Sierra Leonean pastor
whose workers found one of the world’s largest rough diamonds has pledged to
build a new school and bridge in the village where it was found.
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"God
don bless we tiday," one of preacher Emmanuel Momoh's workers in Sierra
Leone shouted brandishing a honey-coloured rock which turned out to be a
706-carat diamond
|
Pastor
Emmanuel Momoh brought the 709-carat precious stone, found in the eastern
Kono district, to the capital, Freetown, last week.
President
Ernest Bai Koroma said Sierra Leoneans should benefit from the discovery and
said it will be auctioned next month.
It’s
hard to say what price it will fetch, but last May, diamond-mining firm Lucara
sold a 813-carat stone for $63m (£51m) at a closed auction in London.
Pastor
Momoh told the BBC’s Umaru Fofana what he hopes to do with his share of the
money:
I
have an action plan. I have to give my tithes. I promised God. I know that God
still has a plan for me.
After
giving my tithes, the village where we got the diamond, we have to make a
bridge, we have to build a school, we have to improve the lives of the people.”
Pastor
Momoh also said he will build a “magnificent church”.
The
diamond is thought to be the 13th largest rough diamond ever to be found.
Divine Diamonds: Sierra
Leone Pastor's 709-Carat Find
AFP
reports that Evangelical preacher Emmanuel Momoh prayed for five years that he
would discover the diamond he needed to pull his family out of poverty in
eastern Sierra Leone.
The
39-year-old pastor obtained his first mining licence in 2012 when the paltry
income he received from the Deeper Life Church in Kono, the country's key
mining district, was stretched too thin for his growing family.
Momoh
went on to build a small business of 18 employees, digging and sifting through
gravel with pickaxes and hoes day after day, never finding gems larger than a
speck in the dirt.
"Diamonds
are extremely hard to find on the ground, it requires patience, hard work and
prayers," Momoh told AFP by telephone in Freetown, where his life is now
taking a very different direction after finding what he believes was a gift
from God.
The
preacher declined to meet in person, citing security reasons, but pictures he
provided to AFP show an angular, wide-eyed man wearing a suit that is too
large, adding to his overall air of boyishness.
On
March 13, the pastor was working in a village named Koryadu when a cry went up
from one of his men in Krio, the most widely spoken language in Sierra Leone
and used by Momoh throughout the phone interview.
"God
don bless we tiday," the worker shouted, brandishing a rock the colour of
pale honey and as large as a child's fist.
"We
washed the diamond properly and put down our tools. Every one of us was in a
jubilant mood," the pastor said.
"I
couldn't sleep that night, we were all praying for what God has done for
us."
- Ethical dilemma -
Momoh
took the diamond the next day to be weighed by the kind of Lebanese dealer who
once purchased the single-carat gems he sold to buy food, supplies and to pay
his workers' wages.
At
706 carats, an amount that would later rise to 709 when it was placed on the
government's official scales, Momoh's diamond was between the 10th and 15th
largest ever found worldwide, experts told AFP.
Such
a find by a so-called artisanal miner, the term for workers who use basic tools
or their bare hands to sift the earth, is exceedingly rare, and Momoh faced an
ethical dilemma.
"I
was tempted by many close friends who told me to smuggle the diamond to
neighbouring Guinea Conakry," he said, thereby avoiding paying any tax on
the diamond.
Diamond
smuggling has harrowing associations for many in Sierra Leone.
Cross-border
diamond trafficking fuelled the country's civil war of 1991-2002, when rebels
allowed traders to exploit diamond mines and ship the gems abroad, largely via
Liberia.
These
became known as "blood diamonds", since most of the labour was done
by enslaved members of the population, who were killed or maimed if they
refused.
Momoh
thought of his workers and the degradation mining had wreaked on their bodies.
The
hard physical labour usually caused hernias and exhaustion, he said, while
injuries are also common during digging in pits and washing the dirt.
When
a pit suddenly collapses in the unregulated informal mines of Sierra Leone,
deaths are common, he said, though nobody has died at any of the sites he mines.
Most
of the diggers are also vulnerable to malaria and often contract parasites by
drinking from polluted streams. Momoh paid their medical bills.
He
made a decision about the diamond.
"Being
a man of God, I decided to hand it over to local authorities," Momoh said,
a choice that caused a global sensation, and he was soon invited to Freetown to
meet President Ernest Bai Koroma.
- Imminent sale -
As
a self-employed miner with a valid government permit, Momoh is entitled to the
proceeds of the sale due on April 5 in Freetown, apart from the four percent
the government legally takes for valuation and export, plus an undetermined
level of income tax.
Momoh
has emphasized that his workers will also benefit from what could be an
astronomical sum of money.
Without
a professional assessment of the diamond's potential flaws and colouring, it is
impossible to value the stone.
However,
a polished stone cut from the Jonker, which is the 10th largest gem-diamond
ever recovered at 726 carats, will go on sale in Hong Kong in May.
A
single 25-carat portion of that stone is likely to sell for US$2.2 million to US$3.6
million (€2 million to €3.4 million), or US$88,000 to US$144,000 for a single
carat, according to one expert consulted by AFP.
Momoh
is clear where the money will go: straight back to Kono, where he was born, to
develop his mining business, support his wife and three children, and to the
local community where so many live in desperate circumstances.
"The
people dealing with the diamond," he said, "I hope they are as honest
with me as I have been with them."
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