It is not false to say that among the West European countries, and Poland is said to be one of them,  our funeral culture and the cult of the dead are the most highly developed. We should take care of it because it constitutes a precious element of our culture. Avoiding the subject of death, dying and the cult of the dead is a characteristic feature of highly developed Western societies. Popular culture shows death in an impersonal form, a bathed in blood slaughter in a war or gangster movie. Every day we can see anonymous victims of assassinations, wars and disasters in the news on TV. We watch both these forms of dying with the same lack of emotions, being effectively separated from them by means of a TV screen. It is more and more commonly found that nowadays nursing homes, hospices or other institutions do all the necessary things when the death of someone’s beloved happens. They effectively isolate old age and illnesses from the modern society which lives in the cult of health and youth. Therefore, we should not be surprised that our Western or Southern neighbours frequently choose tombstones that do not require care, where you do not have to light candles because a diode lights for months.

The production of dimension stone in RSA is concentrated mainly on granite rock, although we can notice some interest in slate, sandstone and marble. Continuing our trip around the quarries of the Republic of Southern Africa, we are leaving Brits, where we visited the deposits of grey and black norites known under the trade name of “black granite” (from Bushveld Igneous Complex – B. C.).

There is about 1100 kilometres from Brits to Springbok when we go through Upington and Poffader. We have to go through the peripheries of South Africa, far from the popular tourist routes. Springbok is a capital city of Namakwa district where it rains most of the year. However, in late August and early September this place changes into a paradise full of flowers.

You can get there by plane from Johannesburg, but then you will not have a chance to visit all the interesting places on the way such as Augrabies Falls National Park where the longest River in South Africa falls from 240 metres. You will remember these beautiful lake and desert landscapes and rich and exotic fauna and flora for a very long time.

In our section devoted to the condition of Polish stone industry we are going to focus today on seaside provinces. Pomeranian and West Pomeranian provinces constitute a special region in Poland, also in terms of stone industry. Seaside resorts full of potential construction stone customers, close to German border (from Szczecin to Berlin there are 150 kilometres of good motorway whereas to get to Warsaw you need to drive 500 kilometres using really bad roads), or Szczecin sea port – the largest centre of block trade in this part of Europe (you can find here practically all companies which deal with block stone trade in Poland), make this region particularly suitable for the development of stone industry.

Ladies and gentleman, on the 31 July the global crisis has finished. These are not my words, I am just repeating them after the governments of the United States of America, Germany and France. It means that there must be something in it. If the largest economies are now making up for their losses, also in Poland the situation will be getting better because these three countries are our most important business partners. We must admit that the situation in Poland has not actually much worsened so we might be afraid that the worst time in Poland is right now and it will last for a few months. The decrease in the  economic situation, like circles in the water made by a thrown stone, begins at the top of the economic ladder and reaches small stone companies with a delay, sometimes after several months. The news concerning a serious turnover decrease in stone trade in the USA, Italy, Spain or Brazil reached us as early as last year.

In February 2008 I received an email from the organisers about a new fair event: Glass & Stone at the International Poznan Fair. Before, I had talked about it with Tomek Staniszewski from Inbra Polska company. And that is how the dream of many stone lovers started to come true. They wanted Poland to have a well-organised and truly professional stone fair, just like the fairs in Verona or Nuremberg.

 

Andrzej Mróz, a Silesian undertaker, made a large step forward towards unveiling the top secret, that is the cooperation of stonemasons and undertakers with priests who administer parishes. He informed the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection about the dishonest practices of a priest in Dąbrowa Górnicza and he won the case. The administrator was the only person who was allowed to dig graves and raise tombs in the cemetery. He let only the companies he knew well enter the cemetery.