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KATANGA (SHABA) CROSS Shaba is the historical region in southeastern Congo, bordering Lake Tanganyika to the east, Zambia to the south, and Angola to the west. It is coextensive with modern Katanga province.
The region's name, Shaba, during the Zairean period, comes from the Swahili word for 'copper', and the region's mines yield most of Congo's copper, cobalt, uranium, zinc, cadmium, silver, germanium, coal, gold, iron, manganese, and tin. The local people were utilizing those minerals long before the arrival of Europeans in the 19th Century.
They had a very definite value in this southern region of Africa, for example ; for a single Shaba Cross, one could get about 22 pounds ( 10 kilos ) of local manioc flour or 5 chickens and maybe a rooster, if the bargainer was tough. For 15 Crosses, you could have yourself a young wife, a female slave, a goat and a few axe heads..
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A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which his mother puts into his palm. 
