The REAL Willy Wonka

Is a Boy named Prince in Ghana

It is dark and the first birds haven’t even begun to greet the day. Prince wakes and readies himself, then leaves the ramshackle maze of the labor camp to join other shadows, passing alongside him, with their machetes. Soon….the faint singing of the boys and men welcomes the sun over the hilltop. The silhouette appears on the top of the hill, like ants on the move. The image seems almost beautiful but on closer look…it’s anything but. The workers walk the dirt path to the cocoa field, their mud-caked clothes dangling over skin and bones. Their voices swell in rhythm with their march, as bare feet after bare feet trudge the mud. Toward the back of the line, the feet get smaller and smaller — younger and younger. The smallest pair of feet in the back runs to keep up. A boy of five might be the youngest of workers on the cacao farm.

The line pauses at one point to pay respect across the mountains toward a giant volcano. Prince looks out. He wonders what school is like. Would he be a good student? The line gazes up at an unnatural sound. Buzzing. Not bees. A drone: one of the ways they’re tracked by the Big Boss. Oh yes, Someone is definitely tracking.

Back at camp, women prep food as Nandi, the eldest, tells a story to the children remaining — either too young to work the fields, or too poor to pay for school.