Capitalist development in the Ivory Coast

NY Times Magazine, November 18, 2001

The Journey of a 15-Year-Old From Mali Who Sold Himself Into Bondage
By MICHAEL FINKEL

The man came to the village on a moped. Youssouf Malé watched him. A man on
a moped was unusual. When visitors did come to Nimbougou, deep in the hill
country of southern Mali, they were almost always on foot, or on bicycle.
The man on the moped had come to sell fabrics, the flower-patterned kind
from which the women in Youssouf's village liked to sew dresses. Youssouf
sat beneath a palm tree and watched. 

He saw that the man was wearing blue jeans. The man was not that much older
than Youssouf, and already he owned a pair of genuine blue jeans. Maybe
three people in Youssouf's whole village owned blue jeans. And on this
man's feet -- my goodness. On this man's feet was something that Youssouf
had never before seen. In Nimbougou, people either wore flip-flops or
plastic sandals or nothing. What this man wore on his feet looked to
Youssouf like a type of house. Like a miniature house, one for each foot.
Two perfect, miniature houses, painted white, with curved walls that rose
to the man's ankles, with a fence up the front of each one made of thin rope. 

Youssouf asked the man about his shoes. He asked how he might be able to
get money to have a pair of shoes like that -- shoes that made you look
important. The man asked Youssouf how old he was, and Youssouf said that he
was 14 or 15, though he didn't know for sure. People in Nimbougou didn't
keep track of such things. The man told Youssouf that he was old enough to
get money. He said it was easy. All Youssouf had to do was leave Mali,
where everybody was poor, and cross the southern border to the Ivory Coast,
where everybody was rich. In the Ivory Coast, the man said, there were jobs
and there was money, and Youssouf could find one of these jobs and earn
some of this money, and then he could buy a pair of shoes. 

(snip)

Youssouf's life on the plantation felt like a little circle. Every day was
the same day. He woke up and ate cornmeal and walked to the fields and
worked and walked back and ate cornmeal and went to sleep. That was it. He
learned how to swing his machete as if it were part of his arm, and how to
sharpen it with a piece of hardwood, and how to hurl it into an orange tree
to bring down a snack. He hacked weeds and dug holes and trimmed trees and
hauled bags of cocoa beans. 

He wore the same shirt and the same pants every day, and soon his clothing
looked like the other workers' clothing -- a series of holes held together
with thread. He made friends with Dramane and Massa and Madou and Adama and
Modipo. He did not become friends with Lagi, the owner, but he did not hate
him either. He worked during the rainy season and he worked during the dry
season. For a full year, he never once left the jungle. At night, during a
heavy rainstorm, the drops crashing against the metal roof sounded to
Youssouf like the end of the world. When it wasn't raining, he spread his
shirt on the roof so that it would be dry by morning. Before they went to
sleep, the boys often dreamed out loud. They dreamed of eating beef, and
owning a moped, and building a house. They spoke about running their own
plantations. If they were not too exhausted, they played a dice game called
ludo. One boy gave Youssouf his first cigarette. Occasionally, they talked
about girls. Youssouf learned a lot about girls. 

When it was quiet, Youssouf sometimes thought about his home village. He
wanted to tell his family where he was. A few times, when he was in a bad
mood, Youssouf considered running into the weeds. He thought often of how
nice it would be to go home for just a single night. 

Late one afternoon, Youssouf was distracted by a bee and swung his machete
poorly and sliced open his left foot. He watched his blood spill into the
soil. He learned that there was no medicine on the plantation. He was
informed by Lagi that if he stayed home from the fields he would not be
paid for those days. He worked for two weeks with a plastic sandal on his
right foot and a bandanna wrapped around his left. 

He was attacked by fire ants so often that he no longer noticed their
stings. Once, he was bitten by a snake, and he sat down in the field and
waited to die. The snake turned out to be nonpoisonous. No matter how many
times he saw a scorpion, he was so frightened that he wouldn't touch it
even after he'd chopped its head off. Three of the workers became sick with
malaria, but Youssouf stayed healthy. 

A few months after Youssouf was hired, Lagi rode his bicycle out of the
jungle and returned with two more boys. He watched as one of the older boys
told the newcomers the story of what would happen if they ran away. 

Youssouf worked on Lagi's plantation six days a week. Nobody worked on the
farm on Fridays, because Lagi is Muslim. Only a few of the workers, though,
stayed home with Lagi. On Fridays, Youssouf and most of the others walked
to nearby plantations and hired themselves out for the day. They charged
500 Central African francs each -- about 68 cents for an 11-hour workday.
They were paid in cash before they headed home. Youssouf kept his money
buried in a secret spot. 

When visiting other plantations, Youssouf always talked with the laborers
who worked there. He learned about good farmers and about bad ones. He
learned that some workers were paid a little more than he, and some a
little less. Some ate three times a day, some twice. He saw workers who
seemed far younger than he, and others who looked as old as his father. He
met a few boys who had worked more than a year but had not been paid at
all. Some of them said that the trees on their farms were sick. The others
didn't know why they hadn't been paid. All of them, though, kept working.
They told Youssouf that they had no choice -- if they stopped and left,
there'd be no chance of ever being paid. They said that they'd be ashamed
to return home after so long with nothing. They said that people in their
villages would look at them as failures. 

The trees on Lagi's plantation stayed healthy. The weeds were kept low. The
cocoa pods grew, and when the pods were ripe, the boys chopped them down
and Lagi's wives split them open and laid the seeds out to dry. Then the
workers put them in sacks, and Lagi sold the sacks to people from the city.
And then, like that, Youssouf had worked a year. His contract was over.
Lagi asked if he'd like to stay for another year, and Youssouf said no. And
so Lagi paid him the money. He paid him 75,000 Central African francs --
7,500 a month for 10 months, with two months' work used to pay for his
purchase price. 

For a year of hard labor, six days a week, sunrise to sunset, Youssouf was
paid a total of $102. It was more money than he had ever seen. He was proud
of himself. He knew for certain that he was now an adult. Lagi's oldest son
pedaled him out of the jungle, and Youssouf's time on the cocoa plantation
came to an end. 

Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/18/magazine/18SLAVES.html

Louis Proyect
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