As if life was not hard enough for the people of Jwaneng in southern Botswana, now they are going to have to do without their cobbler. As recent word spread that the world’s richest diamond mine would be mothballed after a collapse in global demand, the lone artisan who tends the shoes of the 15,000 in the mining settlement was resigned to hanging up his pliers.

“The mines have never shut before,” said Edwin Phaladi, 52, who with his wife and four children depend on their one-room Shoe Clinic. “I came here as a boy. Now I’m going back to my village.”