Tambara had some electronic scales at some point, but no-one trusted them. The weight finally established, bundles of notes are handed over, more gripes about the price aired, and more beer bought. One hundred and fifty four carats of billion year-old carbon. Tambara and his partners sold it for a pittance, and then the one whose name stuck to the stone's, Barabas, scarpered with most of the money. Next door, in his tin sweat box, Jose the Brazilian diamond-buyer is also hard at work.
Diamonds are trickier than gold.
It's harder to determine a stone's quality. Some of the men will have been working alone for weeks, camped deep in the forest. Lonely, scared and hungry. If a buyer then claims there's a hairline crack in a diamond, just to get the price down, things can get ugly. The nearest National Guard outpost is an hour and a half away, and they have to hitch-hike to get to the scene of a crime.