The Bitter Side of Sweet

by Tara Sullivan

  It’s quiet, but it’s enough.

  “We can’t do much for those kids,” I say, “but they may never get away and have a chance to tell their story. We do.”

  “You’re right,” says Khadija finally.

  I feel like the sky has opened again and my feelings pour out of me into it.

  “So what do we need to do?” asks Seydou. He sounds so grown-up. I look at him for a moment in the moonlit darkness and realize that he is no longer my clueless baby brother. My heart twists a little, wondering whether my cricket might be gone for good.

  “When Mrs. Kablan wakes up, we get her to finish writing her article,” I say. “We make her listen to our story, and write it down. That’s what we have to do.”

  “Why should we wait?” asks Khadija. “Let’s do it now.”

  “I don’t think—” I say, remembering how tired she was just moments ago, but Khadija is already leaning forward and shaking Mrs. Kablan’s shoulder.

  “Mama!”

  Mrs. Kablan lurches awake, grabbing the wheel.

  “What? What is it?” she gasps.

  “We need to talk,” says Khadija.

  24

  Mun kéra?” she asks, looking from one of us to another, concerned.

  “We need you to write your article,” Seydou says, leaning forward.

  “What?” Mrs. Kablan is still half-asleep.

  “I know you want to get to Liberia right away,” I say, “but before you go, could we take a little time to help you with your article? It’s really important that people know about this.”

  “I—” she starts. Khadija doesn’t let her finish.

  “You can change your article if you have to, Mama! You can make it an interview of three kids who lived through the farms and add in the stuff you already have.”

  The sudden gleam of interest in her mother’s eyes makes me feel like maybe this is going to work after all.

  “Please,” I say. “Think of all the other mothers in Mali. They may never have their children come back to them. We want to tell our story, madame. We owe it to all the kids who didn’t get away. Please help us.”

  Mrs. Kablan’s lips purse tightly. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a notepad and a pencil.

  “Very well,” she says, knuckling the sleep out of her eyes and sitting up straighter. “Let’s begin.”

  We take turns, each of us telling the specific story of how we ended up on the farm, with Mrs. Kablan asking questions to fill in the holes in her research as we go: How many boys worked with us? What were their names and ages? Where was everybody from? How long did we work in a day? Did we ever get days off? What happened when we got sick? How did we get out? The questions go on and on.

  We answer each one as thoroughly as we can and Ms. Kablan scribbles furiously, jotting down everything. By the time dawn’s orange fingers stroke the hood of the Jeep, we’re almost done.

  “You see,” I say, finishing my story, “in Mali, it’s traditional for young people to leave home and go work somewhere else for a season while the old people and the women and little kids stay home and tend the crops as they grow. It didn’t feel odd to trust the bus drivers in Sikasso. They were offering jobs, and it seemed like a good place to start.

  “Even when we got to the farm and I saw them arguing with Moussa, I still didn’t understand—why was this farmer giving out money before we had worked for the season? And why was he giving it to the man with the truck and not to us? I decided he must be giving a portion of what we would earn to the man to cover the trouble he took getting us there. Then the man with the truck drove away and Moussa handed us some tools and put us on a work crew with the other new boys.”

  “It was only that night,” Seydou cuts in, “when they first locked us in the sleeping hut, that we heard the truth. The boys who had been there for a while started to whisper and we found out that we weren’t going to be able to leave at the end of the growing season.”

  “The bosses said we could leave when we’d earned out our purchase price,” I add. “But they wouldn’t tell me how much we owed, and in all the time we worked there, I only saw boys arrive or die, never leave when they wanted to. And we never once got paid.”

  Mrs. Kablan drops her pen and massages her hand for a moment.

  “I am so sorry, boys,” she says. “So sorry that you were caught up in all of this. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle.” She splays her fingers across the notes she’s been taking like she can soothe the truth out of them and, for a moment, there is silence in the Jeep. Then Mrs. Kablan motions briskly for me to go on with my story. But as my mouth parrots out the facts of our imprisonment, my mind wanders. Because, though I’m glad to my bones to know that our story will get out into the world, Khadija was right: we have bigger problems right now. As I come to the end of my story, I’m faced with the more pressing problem of what Seydou and I are going to do once this interview is finished.

  Forced to be honest with myself, I can finally admit that going home is not a good option. If the drought hasn’t broken, I’ll have to leave again to make money, maybe get trapped on another farm. And what life will Seydou have with only one arm? There’s no way he’ll manage well enough as a farmer to stay alive. I’ll have to take care of him too.

  Then an idea occurs to me.

  A perfect idea.

  A terrible idea.

  It makes my stomach churn sour to consider it, but by the time we’ve wrapped up the interview and Khadija’s mama is putting away her notes, I know there is only one answer.

  “Madame?” I ask.

  Her eyes jump to meet mine in the rearview mirror, though her hands continue to pack her things.

  “Yes, Amadou?”

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  That stops her hands. Slumping, she says, “I’m sorry, Amadou. But I don’t have any legal papers for you. I can’t bring you to France with us.”

  I’m surprised. France still seems like the tip of the moon to me. Even though I was upset at her for leaving us, I’ve known all along her taking us there wasn’t possible. But deep inside it makes me feel warm and wanted that she’s been trying to figure out what to do with us too.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “I was wondering if you would be willing to make one more stop before you go to Liberia, and take us to that other cacao farm you mentioned. The one where they pay the people who work there?”

  She looks at me in the mirror, her face blank. Khadija and Seydou are staring at me. I gulp and finish what I need to say.

  “I was wondering if you could ask them to give me a job.”

  Though it’s far, far out of their way, she does it.

  Khadija, Seydou, and I sit in the backseat of the Jeep and watch the landscape move past us. Now that it’s light out I sit in the middle so that Seydou can have the window.

  A long time later, we pull out of a tunnel of bush and roll past cultivated groves of cacao trees. I feel myself tense up just looking at them, but then a warm hand slips into mine and gives a little squeeze. I look down, expecting to see Seydou’s small fingers laced through mine, but instead I see that they’re Khadija’s.

  I look into her face and see that her eyes are shiny.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispers to me. The rattling of the Jeep over the ruts in the road keeps the sound from the others. “Mother said it’d be different here. You’ll be safe. You’ll get paid.”

  But her voice shakes as she says it and inside me a little worm of fear whispers, Maybe. Both of us want to believe it, but neither of us is sure we can.

  It occurs to me that, one way or another, Khadija’s about to leave our lives, probably forever. I squeeze her fingers and try to memorize the details of her face. Almond eyes, like her mother’s, oval face, fuzzy braids finally finis
hed and tied in a fresh knot at the base of her neck. Like it or not, over the course of everything that’s happened, I’ve learned to care for the wildcat, and the thought of losing her grinds inside me like broken bones.

  It’s hard to believe that only yesterday we were still in Khadija’s house in San Pédro. Hard to believe that it was only last night that we were drinking cocoa in the dark. Impossible to believe that ten days ago I didn’t even know she existed. Now we’re driving through villages and fields that look achingly familiar. Finally, we pull into a little village.

  “You stay in the car until I’ve had a word with Abdoulaye,” Mrs. Kablan says, and gets out of the Jeep and heads inside a low, mud-walled building.

  “Are you sure about this?” Seydou’s fear is a whisper at my elbow.

  I consider the building and the groves stretching behind it.

  “Ayi,” I answer honestly, “but I think we need to trust Mrs. Kablan. If this place is all she said it is, it will be a good thing for us. And if not”—I shrug and turn to look him in the eye—“then we’ll get away and make our way home. We did it before. I won’t stop until you’re safe.”

  His old-man eyes stare into mine as he weighs my words.

  “Okay,” he says. He straightens. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can,” I agree.

  Khadija leans forward and rubs Seydou’s back while she gives the clearing a critical look. “It’s cleaner than Moussa’s farm. And, as a journalist, Mama knows a lot of things and even more people. She’s probably right about this place.”

  I look out the side window in time to see Khadija’s mother come out again with a tall, wiry man. In the doorway, I see her rummage in her purse and hand him some money. The little voice of fear inside me gets louder. I have to swallow hard so that it doesn’t choke me. No, I tell it. You’ve spent enough time not trusting anyone. It’s time to let go of that.

  Mrs. Kablan walks to the Jeep and opens our door. “This is Abdoulaye,” she says, waving her hand at the big man behind her. “Abdoulaye, this is Amadou and Seydou, the boys I told you about.”

  “Aw ni sógóma, boys,” Abdoulaye says.

  “Nbah i ni sógóma,” I mumble.

  She turns to us.

  “I’ve given Abdoulaye some money to get you started, and he’s agreed to let you work when you’re not in school. If you ever want to go home to Mali, you tell him. He’s agreed to arrange the transportation and send the bill to me in France.”

  I look at Abdoulaye.

  “I’ve worked cacao before. I can pay our way.”

  “So Mrs. Kablan says. How old are you?” Abdoulaye asks me, looking me over.

  “How old do you have to be to work here?”

  At that, he throws back his head and laughs, the bump in his stringy throat bobbing up and down.

  “Well, we try to only have adults work the farm, but since you’re the head of your little household, we can probably let you work half days when you’re not in school, as long as you’re at least seventeen.”

  “How fortunate,” I say, with a completely straight face. “Yesterday was my birthday. I just turned seventeen.”

  Abdoulaye laughs again. It’s a kind laugh and I begin to hope that perhaps this will all work out. Beside me I see Khadija’s mother hide a smile with her hand.

  “Happy birthday,” Abdoulaye says, holding out a hand to me, “and welcome.”

  Khadija’s mother turns to us then. “Goodbye, boys. Thank you for everything you did for Khadija. I’ll make sure that your story gets told. I’ll even send a copy of the article here so you can see I’ve kept my word.”

  I hold out my hand to her.

  “Thank you, madame, for all you’ve done for us.”

  She takes my hand. Then, with a weak smile, she gets in the car.

  Khadija scoops Seydou into a big hug.

  “Don’t go!” he sobs, clinging to her with his one good hand.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she says softly. “But I’ll come back to visit if I ever can and I’ll write you letters. Will you write me too?” Seydou nods, the illiterate fool, and the two of them are hugging and crying. Losing Khadija is like a knife in my side: painful, tearing. Finally I can’t take it anymore and I pull Seydou away.

  “All right, enough,” I say gently, looping my arm around him. He sniffles for a bit, then wipes his face. Khadija straightens, and the two of us take a long look at each other. There’s a small silence.

  “Safe travels to France,” I say finally.

  “Good luck here.”

  Another silence stretches while we look at each other with nothing else to say. Then Khadija steps forward and wraps her arms around me. To my surprise, I do the same. For a moment we just stand there. Then we pull away.

  “I won’t forget you, wildcat,” I say.

  “Of course you won’t,” she says. “We’re family.”

  With that, she pulls us both into one big hug, and then turns and gets into the car. As the white Jeep disappears into the bush, Khadija twists in her seat and waves to us out the rear window. I hold Seydou tight against me and we both wave back until she vanishes from sight.

  EPILOGUE

  I still count the things that matter.

  We were at the camp seventeen weeks before Abdoulaye was able to take Seydou to a hospital to be fitted for his new arm. It showed up two weeks later. In another four and a half, he was using it easily. It was twenty-nine days after getting it that Seydou stopped complaining of pain in the arm that’s not there. Since then he has gotten more and more comfortable. There is still a hint of the old man in his eyes but a bit of my cricket is there too. Now a missing arm no longer stops him from hopping around.

  It was also over three months before we got our first letter from Khadija in France, saying she and her mother were safe and well, and a clipping of her mother’s article, but it was eight months before Seydou learned enough to be able to read them to me. It was another three months after that before he knew enough to be able to write back. My writing still looks like I dipped two chickens’ feet in ink and then made them fight while standing on my paper. My teacher says it’s good for a first effort from a boy who has never moved anything smaller than a machete, but it’s nothing compared to Seydou. Even with only one arm, Seydou has taken to school like a caged animal finally released.

  It was seven months before we stopped hiding food to make sure we would have enough. Two more months after that, I realized that nobody had hit me since I arrived, but it was a whole year before I stopped flinching when the men got too close. It was only last week that I overheard our teacher saying that he thinks Seydou might grow up to be a teacher too. You don’t need two arms to be a teacher, he said. You only need a quick mind. Seydou has walked on air for the past seven days.

  We’ve been paid every Friday for fifty-four straight Fridays. We are going home for the first time twenty Fridays from now. That’s when I’ll have enough money to pay my own way to Mali, give some to Moke and Auntie, and still have enough to come back. I will miss only three paydays. Seydou will miss only three weeks of school.

  There are also some things that I don’t count.

  Every day when I come home from working in the fields, I have no idea how many pods are in my sack.

  I refuse to count the things that don’t matter.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Cacao, “the food of the gods,” was once so valued that, in ancient times, its beans were used as money. Today, we have turned it into a cheap sweet we consume thoughtlessly, but cacao still comes at a terrible cost. Amadou, Seydou, and Khadija are fictional characters, but their story is one that many children share. Though it’s hard to believe, thousands of children today continue to work in slavery to produce a treat for other children half a world away.

  Today, almost three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is grown in
Africa, with 40 percent coming from the Ivory Coast alone. However, multiple factors, such as the low international price of cocoa, civil unrest, and high taxation, mean that small-scale growers (the way the vast majority of the world’s cacao is grown) earn almost nothing from the production of their crop. They still have to tend their groves, and carry the risk of a bad growing season, or blight. They still often have to pay for what they eat, since they are growing a cash crop instead of food. With so little made on each harvest, many growers don’t have enough left over to cover their costs, let alone to fairly pay their workers. Thus, many turn to free labor: modern-day slavery.

  Too often, that labor comes from children.

  By and large, in the United States, children do not work. We have labor laws, minimum age requirements, and mandatory public schooling. This is not true in much of the rest of the world. In fact, UNICEF estimates that worldwide 15 percent of children, approximately 150 million of them, work in conditions that are potentially harmful to their health.

  Repeated attempts have been made to get the world’s chocolate companies to be aware of the conditions under which their main ingredient is grown. Again and again, they have refused to take action. An agreement, the Harkin-Engel Protocol, does exist, which lays out steps to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in cocoa production. However, as of today, there is little evidence that any real change is happening as a result of this protocol. The chocolate companies value a low international price for cocoa and maintain that they have nothing to do with bands of criminals selling children into slavery on a distant continent. The organized crime rings on the Ivorian border continue to traffic boys and girls without interference and children continue to be forced to work.

  The good news about chocolate is that chocolate companies cannot exist without consumer demand. If you’re bothered by the state of the chocolate industry, you, as a consumer, can have an impact. Consider writing, e-mailing, or using social media to contact your favorite chocolate company and ask them to make a commitment to decreasing the poverty of the producers in their supply chain. Or, do some actual (or virtual) reverse trick-or-treating where you tell people about this issue instead of taking mainstream chocolate from them on Halloween. One way or another, decide to be deeply informed about your favorite treat before you enjoy it.