It is a funny world of its own - the town of Orapa. Approx. 10.000 people in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by bush and sand in an extremely hot and dry place. And Why? Because sometime ago somebody found - just there - little stones that were transparent, shiny and very hard...
Everything is dominated by the mine. De Beers controlls basically the entire village. Don' get me wrong, it is definitely not a bad place to be - in fact one of the safest in southern Africa - it is just so different to other places. It remindes me a bit of Asterix and Obelix, only that their village was surounded by a wooden wall and this place is by a big fence.

The entrence gates to Orapa look like big border gates or so. Booms, security etc...

Well one thing is for sure, once you are there you can relaxe and sleep a lot. Because in the evenings there is nothing else to do. So your days basically look like: getting up at 5.30, breakfast 6.15, 7.00 start working, if you are lucky knock off time at 17.00, supper at 19.00, a couple of beers afterwards and sleep! Easy!