Caused by the political and the strong ethnic tensions it is very difficult to get material from the locality. Further the region has no good infrastructure, no electric power (except a few small towns), nothing which is worth to be judged as street in our countries, no clean water (or water at all) - under this circumstances only small miners work under very primitive conditions - in fact they dig holes in the ground with hand-tools. So material from Congo was always very rare and hard to obtain. Before I tell you more about this particular crystal a short side-note to the locality: most Congo Tourmalines were sold with Goma or North Kivu as locality, this is correct but not very exact. Rubaya is one of the most exact localities that we ever know from Congo. It was discovered in 2014 and it produced a wide range of colors and crystals in exceptional quality regarding luster and clarity. Based on scientific studies these Tourmalines are Elbaite with a low liddicoatite component and with Fe and Mn as main chromophores. Now more about this crystal: it is clear like glass - there is no backlight or any other light effect, you can see the colors even when it is lying in a box - nearly no cracks or inclusions are present. I can see the pore of skin through the crystal. Even when you compare to most prominent localities like Pederneira or Paprok you will not find more than a few crystals in this exceptional quality. And there is one more important indicator: the end-point. It shows a wonderful structure, like fish scales and they are all razor sharp terminated and (like the entire crystal) highly lustrous. Below the endpoint there is a 1mm thick intense green zoning - this was most difficult to photograph. So I did three photos - to show the color, to show the texture and on one shot I tried to combine the visual impact of structure and color. The upper half shows a wonderful pastel mint-green color, the lower half a very attractive pink to violet color - I know pink Tourmalines from Brazil, Pakistan and Afghanistan - but the color tones from Congo are unique, not compare-able to any other locality and the combination of green and pink and the sharp boundary of both colors in union with luster and clarity might be unique.
