Shiny best friends

Every girl's dream. The beautiful little box, with that so characteristic shade of blue, the perfect white bow. Since I first knew that "Tiffany blue" meant so much, I always wanted to know how it feels to get engaged with such a beautiful and meaningful object. A diamond ring. I've written about it before, they say it is necessary to propose with diamonds, in order to "close the deal".

If it's not the Tiffany box, then, my other dream is to get engaged at home, eating Chinese food, on my sweatpants and my trousers. The way I naturally look. No make-up, no stilettos, just me. They way my husband-to be should love me the most. But then, after the emotive moment, after the hugging, after realizing that you are actually spending the rest of your life with that person, he'll say the perfect words -"I'm taking you tomorrow to Cartier so we can choose your engagement ring"-. What a dream...

An $8,500 dream. (Like the ring shown above).

An engagement ring stands up for commitment, love, strength, flawless beauty. Diamonds, "a girl's best friend".

If diamonds are girl's best friend, and we purchase them for such a ridiculous price, how come, that the person that worked so hard to get it on the first place, wins $1 per day, or just the lunch of the day. Who is that miner's best friend?

Diamonds stand up for what? For wars, for suffering, for child soldiers, for amnesty to the war criminals. They stand up for lost hands and limbs, they stand for mutilated clitoris and savaged women. Diamonds stands for suffering and nonesense conflicts.
Even though the international community has agreed on the Kimberley process, that ensures that diamonds do not fund violence, that obliges major distributors (such as Tiffany & Co. and Cartier) to guarantee that their diamonds are not bloody, there is still a lot to do, mainly because much smaller distributors don't seem able to make this guarantee, thus, the problems maintains.

Miners should be educated on the value of their work and payed properly for it. It is absurd that a mine that has extracted these very same, now Kimberley processed diamonds for the past 50 years, it is the poorest, the hopeless, the same slavery camp it was when the war was at the peak....

So, I think I no longer dream about the Tiffany box, or the Cartier shopping, I dream with diamonds ensuring development, health, hope and progress... I dream with miners paid properly, I dream with no more wars financed by diamonds.