Blue Gold (13 page)

“Sure, okay. Sylvie, we've started a web campaign on the Internet to raise money for you to come to Canada.”

“A what?” asked Sylvie. She knew about the Internet, but she had no idea what a “web campaign” was.

Marie saw Sylvie's confusion. She explained, “Alain runs a website keeping tabs on mining operations in the Congo, to raise awareness about the suffering that results from the fighting over coltan and other minerals.”

“We're starting a campaign on the website about you, Sylvie.” Alain picked up from Marie. “About your situation as a refugee.”

“Basically,” continued Marie, “in order for you to go to Canada you have to be sponsored by people who are willing to look after you. My parents want to do that, but they're retired and not wealthy. So Alain is using the website to raise the money you'll need for travel, and to finish high school in Montreal.”

Sylvie's heart leapt. “Thank you!” she sputtered to both Marie and Alain. “Thank you so much!”

“We can't get ahead of ourselves,” cautioned Marie. “We figure we'll need fifty thousand dollars to cover your expenses until you finish high school, more when you continue to university.”

To Sylvie, it was an unimaginable amount of money.

“When people see your photo on the website, Sylvie,”
said Alain, “they start to understand what is going on there.”

Suddenly, Sylvie's face fell. She knew that the Internet went all around the world. Now people everywhere could see the ugliness of her scar. Her heart was pounding, her stomach lurching. Seeing her panic, Marie rested her hand lightly on Sylvie's shoulder.

Alain looked worried. “What's wrong?”

“It's the photo,” explained Marie. “Sylvie's sensitive about…”

She didn't need to finish the sentence. Alain seemed to understand.

“Sylvie, I'm sorry,” he said. “I thought we had your permission to use it. We'll take it down.”

“No, don't,” replied Marie flatly. Sylvie turned to her in surprise. Whose side was she on? “Look, it's your decision,” Marie told her, “but when people see you and find out about your life, they start to understand what's going on in the DRC, how lives are being destroyed because of blood minerals like coltan. People need to understand the human cost of the things we take for granted. When they see your picture, they
get
it. Sylvie, you could help lots of other Congolese.” Sylvie turned her head away. “If only you could see yourself the way others do,” Marie coaxed gently. “A beautiful girl. A smart girl. A
strong
girl.”

“I don't care about others,” Sylvie said, her voice thick with emotion. “I care about my family.”

“Remember, eventually you'll be able to help them, too.”

Hope and fear tugged at Sylvie, pulling her in opposite directions. Seeing her torment, Marie squeezed her shoulder.

“It's okay. I'm pressuring you too much,” she said. She turned to Alain. “Let's give Sylvie some time to think.”

But Sylvie was already thinking. She had to do whatever it took, she realized, to save the family from Kayembe, and from Nyarugusu—it was what Papa would have wanted her to do, even if it meant exposing her ugliness to the world. She looked into the computer screen and told Alain, “You can use the photo.”

“Good!” replied Alain.

“But my family needs to come, too,” she said. “All of us. My mother, my sister, and my two brothers. ”

Sylvie and Alain both hesitated.

“Sylvie, that's a lot more complicated,” replied Alain.

“I'm not leaving without them,” she told them. “All of us must come.”

Marie took in a deep breath. “Okay,” she nodded, after a moment.

“But Marie—” Alain began to argue with her.

“I know it won't be easy, Alain,” Marie told him, “but we have to find a way.”

Alain didn't look convinced, but Sylvie saw the determination in Marie's face and took heart. In the tug-of-war going on inside her, she allowed hope to pull her away from fear.

 

IT WAS ALMOST DARK
by the time Sylvie reached home with the beans and oil, jumping at every shadow as she hurried along the track that led to Zone 3. If it wasn't safe for a girl to walk alone through the camp in the daytime, a girl alone at night was assumed by many to be a prostitute, and free for the taking. All the way, she worried about how to explain to her mother that she had no maize. But when she entered the hut, she was surprised to find Mama seated on the dirt floor with Lucie, the two of them measuring handfuls of cornmeal from a full sack by the light of a kerosene lamp. There was some tinned meat and fish stacked beside the sack of meal, even fresh tomatoes and an eggplant.

“Where did all this come from?” asked Sylvie, half suspecting.

“Soldiers brought it!” reported Lucie, the sticky dough webbing her small fingers.

Sylvie realized,
This is how Kayembe thinks he can buy me!
She wanted to take the food and toss it outside, but then what would they eat?

“Were you too lazy to carry the maize yourself?”
remarked Mama as Sylvie set down the oil and beans. When Sylvie didn't reply, she made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Gifts always come with a price.”

She thinks I slept with him!
Sylvie's face went hot with humiliation.

“I don't want his gifts, and I did nothing to get them!” Sylvie snapped back. She saw Pascal seated on the sleeping mat, tossing a small stone back and forth between his hands, sulking. “What's wrong, Pascal?” He didn't reply.

“Mama says you're going away. Is it true, Sylvie?” asked Lucie.

Now Sylvie understood why Pascal was pouting—she had promised him she would never leave him. She turned an angry look on Mama, who continued shaping dough balls for frying, avoiding Sylvie's eyes. What had she hoped to gain by telling the children? Did she want to turn them against her?

Pascal looked up at her, glaring defiantly. “Go where?”

“To Canada.”

“What's that?” asked Lucie.

“It's a country, in North America. Across the ocean. We're all going,” she told them. “Pascal, do you hear me? All of us will go.”

“We should be going home,” stated Mama, keeping her gaze fixed on the dough. “Think about your father. What if there's no one here when he comes? I'll die waiting for Patrice, if I have to. If you go, you'll go without me.”

Sylvie looked from Mama to Pascal, tossing the stone between his hands harder and faster, his hurt and anger building. She couldn't break her promise and leave him, any more than she could leave Mama. Either they all went to Canada, or they all must stay here. And if they stayed here, the only way to protect the family would be for her to give herself to Kayembe. She cursed hope for tricking her into believing there could be another way. But it was her own fault. She had let hope lift her heart, and now it had so much further to fall.

ON SUNDAY
, Laiping got to the Internet café early to call her parents on one of the computers, the way Min had showed her. She'd come alone because Fen was studying English from a tattered book she had found in the dorm common room—
Speak English to be Successful!
, another part of her self-improvement plan—and Min still wasn't feeling well.

“Auntie hasn't heard from Min,” her mother told her over Auntie's cell phone. Her parents had no phone of their own, so they had to borrow the phone that Min had bought for her parents. “Is everything all right with her?”

“She's fine,” Laiping replied with a white lie. “Just busy.” She intentionally waited until her father came on the line to explain about the company holding back her pay. It was her mother who worried the most about money. “I won't be able to send anything until next month, Baba,” she told him.

“Send it when you can,” he said, easing her mind. “You're a good daughter.”

Without warning, Laiping's eyes welled up. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how much she missed her father's kindness.

“Soon I'll have a mobile of my own and I can call you any time,” she promised.

“Just make sure you work hard,” he advised her. “Make the bosses feel important. That's the path to success.”

Laiping wished she could speak with her parents longer, but they were unused to talking on the phone and quickly ran out of things to say. Besides, the people in line waiting for their turn at the computer were giving her impatient looks. After she said goodbye, she looked around the café full of chatterboxes. All the things she had found so exciting when she first arrived on the company campus
—the crowds, the noise, the activity—were annoying to her this morning. Maybe it was that after working two full weeks in the factory, she felt so tired. Or maybe it was that all these strangers made her feel lonely. Then her heart took a small leap. In the press of people placing their orders at the counter, she spotted Kai. Gathering her courage, she went up to him.

“Hello,” she said, suddenly shy and awkward. What if he didn't remember her?

“Laiping!” he said with a grin. “I was hoping to see you here.” Even when he was smiling, there was an inten­sity about him that missed nothing—including her sadness. “What's the matter?” he asked.

Laiping shrugged. “Just tired.”

“You need a coffee,” he replied.

“I don't have enough money,” she told him. “I was supposed to get paid, but there's nothing in my bank account.”

“I get it,” he said knowingly. “The company is holding your money hostage. Go find us a table. I'll buy you a coffee.”

“Thank you.” Laiping didn't tell him she preferred tea.

Laiping waited for a table to become vacant, and found one just as Kai carried over two mugs of coffee. She added enough sugar and milk to make it drinkable.

“How was your week?” asked Kai, sitting across from her. “Other than not getting paid.”

“It's so unfair,” she complained.

Kai glanced around to make sure he wasn't being overheard. “The company doesn't care about being fair. They care about making money.”

“But what can I do to get what they owe me?”

Kai shrugged. “They say that if we have issues about working conditions, we should take them to the union. But the union is a joke. It's supposed to fight for the rights of workers, but it's run by the government, and the government is Steve Chen's biggest fan.”

“I don't even really know who Steve Chen is,” said Laiping.

“
Ai ya!
” exclaimed Kai at her ignorance.

“I know he owns the company,” she replied, “but who is he?”

“He's one of the richest guys in China. He owns factories all over Asia that make electronics for big brand names. Rich people in America and Europe spend big money for the stuff we make, while we get treated like slaves—and Steve Chen pockets billions. Even the Americans think it's wrong. There've been all kinds of protests over there.”

Kai took out his knockoff smartphone and with a few touches of his fingertip brought up what looked like an American news site on the screen, written in English. Laiping was shocked. The government was very strict about blocking sites people weren't permitted to see.

“Are you allowed to look at that?” she asked, guessing from the way that Kai held the screen so that no one else could see it that this was a prohibited site.

“Watch this,” he said, ignoring her concern.

He tweaked the screen to enlarge a video box. Laiping watched a small group of
gweilo
walking in a circle outside a store, carrying picket signs and shouting something in English. The video zoomed in on one of the picket signs, on which there was a photo of a girl who looked African. Laiping saw a long diagonal scar across the girl's face. The video zoomed out again to show the shop and the protestors. There was a logo on the storefront, just like the logo on some of the products the company made.

“They're demanding fair wages for us, and better working conditions,” Kai explained.

“Who's that girl?” Laiping asked. “What happened to her face? And why is she on that poster?”

“It isn't just us in China who are getting a bad deal. Her name is Sylvie. She's a refugee from the war in the Congo, where the factory gets tantalum.”

Laiping remembered learning about the tantalum powder used in capacitors during her training. “They're protesting about her, as well as us?”

Yes. There's a website about her, here,” said Kai.

He tapped the screen and a page of text appeared, with the same photo of the girl that was on the picket sign.

“You can read that?” she asked.

“Some,” he replied. “This is in French as well as English.”

“Are you breaking the law looking at that?”
Am I breaking the law, too?

“They treat us all like ignorant peasants,” Kai continued, without answering her question. “I've been to university, the first one in my family to go. When I took this job, I thought I'd be doing something interesting, something creative. But instead I'm like some robot.” Kai dropped his voice and leaned closer, so that his face was inches away from hers. Laiping had never been this close to a boy before. It was unsettling, but exciting, too. “I like you, Laiping. Anybody can see how bright you are,” he said. “You deserve better. We all deserve better.”