On April 14, 1908, the African labourer, Peter Zacharias Lewala, found a
glittering stone and simply said: "moy Klip". The “beautiful stone”
was a flawless diamond and caused unprecedented hysteria among the German
colonial rulers. Within a short time, a
number of colonial-style towns sprouted from the dry sandy soil, attracting
hundreds of fortune hunters, entrepreneurs and workers. The diamond-rich area
in the southwest of Namibia was declared a restricted area, and the local
population has to go away empty-handed. However, the area was
exploited within a very short time and the splendor was recapture by the desert. The remnants of the
former luxury and used equipment tell a timeless beautiful fairy tale of wealth
and disappointment, of rise and fall, of colonial ostentation and its transience.
