The Quest for a Moral Diamond
The Peace Diamond, and the miner who found it, are at the center of a new push to redeem African diamond mining.
Emmanuel Momoh, the first owner of the Peace Diamond, on a trek to the pit where it was found.
Photographer: KC Nwakalor for Bloomberg Businessweek
From a pickup truck heading out of Freetown, Sierra Leone’s recent history is legible in the images that scroll beyond the passenger-side window. A hand-painted sign reading “Amputee Lodge” points to a structure serving victims brutalized by an 11-year civil war that ended in 2002. Next comes a billboard that says “Report Bribery,” a plea to resist the corruption blamed for siphoning away international relief funds and obstructing postwar recovery. A faded canvas banner—“Only You Can Stop Ebola”—is a tattered relic from a 2014 outbreak that killed thousands. As we ascend the hills on the city’s periphery, a glance in the rearview mirror reveals a thick brown stripe running down the face of a distant slope: the scar from a 2017 mudslide that devoured the homes of at least 3,000 people, killing more than 1,100 of them.
For a break from all this misfortune and calamity, stop looking out the window and focus on the man in the passenger seat of the truck.