‘I didn’t say it did,’ she said, and I immediately felt bad for snapping at her, because on closer inspection it was obvious from her compressed lips and deliberate breathing that she was as shocked as I was. ‘“Artisanal mining”, it’s called,’ she went on quietly. ‘Huge un-mechanised pits like this employ whole families for next to nothing, making even the youngest kids work in these terrible conditions, chemicals everywhere, breathing in poison, with middle men selling on the fruits of their labours at a handsome profit.’

In French she asked the boy, Beno, if his parents also worked at the mine.

‘Non.’

When she asked why, I understood his answer easily enough. ‘Ils sont morts.’

I winced when she immediately asked him what killed them, but her directness didn’t seem to bother Beno, who explained that both his mother and father had been sick before they died.

In response to Amelia’s follow-up ‘What with?’ the boy just shrugged.

‘Qui vis-tu avec maintenant?’ Amelia asked him.

The boy flicked his eyes at a group shovelling dirt into sacks fifty or so metres away. ‘Mon oncle,’ he said.

Looking more closely, I saw that not all of the men and women in the group were working. One guy, wearing jeans whose legs had for some reason been ripped off at different heights, one above the knee the other below it, had his hands on his hips and was watching us. When my eyes met his he called out in French, but not to us, it turned out. He was yelling at Beno. The little boy squatted down in the dirt and started picking through it again. When I looked back to the man – his uncle, presumably – I saw he’d also returned to his sack-filling. We’d interrupted Beno’s work, and when told to get back to it that’s what he’d done, immediately.

53.

Amelia was still asking Beno questions. When had he last eaten, how many days a week did he spend here, what time did he start and stop, but although I wanted to know more about his life too, I sensed what she didn’t: if we stopped him working again, he’d probably pay for it. I shushed her and we both took a step back. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to just walk away. As I watched, a fly landed on the boy’s thin neck and crawled up towards his hairline. He didn’t bother to wave it off.

‘How can we help him?’ I said.

‘It’s not just him though, is it?’ said Amelia.

Of course it wasn’t. Beyond Beno, another slightly bigger boy was also sifting muck, and dotted around us there were other boys and girls mixed in with the adults.