Tell the World This Story

"Les portables sont cassés! Tous les portables sont cassés!"

Mercy's voice rang through the valley.

"All the phones - they're broken!"

She arrived, panting, on the threshold of the clearing where Mzee Joseph sat. The elderly man shifted on his low seat, turning away from a smoldering fire pit and toward the approaching girl.

"What?" He grunted, voice thin from decades of inhaling coal dust. "What are you saying, mjukuu?"

She was not really his mjukuu, of course - but Joseph referred to all of the lost or kidnapped children in the region as his grandchildren.

Mercy stepped closer, squatting with her hands on her knees to recover from what must have been a lengthy run. She choked out a response between gasps for breath.

"The phones - everyone's phones - they've just - stopped working. They've all -shut off."

Mzee Joseph blinked rapidly, clearly processing this statement. He glanced around sharply, as if expecting an armed guard to emerge from any direction.

"Tous les - all the phones? Uhakika?"

He leapt between French, English and Kiswahili with the speed and fluidity of a gazelle. From a deep pocket in his worn green cargo shorts, he drew out a battered Samsung.

"Kabisa. Yes, Mzee. All of them."

Mzee Joseph's brow furrowed. His own smartphone stayed dead and dark as a brick as he fruitlessly drilled at the power button.

"When you say all of them...everyone's in the city, too?"

Mercy nodded, her voice sinking to a furtive whisper as she replied.

"I think it's - I think it's everywhere. Like...in the whole world."

Mzee Joseph's brow dove into an even deeper valley of confusion. His dark eyebrows crashed together like foam-flecked waves. "C'est pas possible. How do you know?"

"The radio." Mercy's voice took on an inkling of pride, as she tugged at the cord slung around her shoulder. A weathered, hand-crank survival radio hung from the frayed rope. "No one can text or call, but I picked up a signal from the city. They were saying that the old long-distance towers have contacted people in France, the U.K., l'Etats Unis, South Africa..." Mercy's eyes clouded with a mixture of wonder and fear. "It really is happening everywhere."

Mzee Joseph leaned back slowly, taking this in.

"You shouldn't let any of the guards see you with that, mjukuu," Joseph grunted, pointing his grey chin at the radio. "You know they'll destroy it." His rough voice took on a warm pride, however, as he added, “But you did well to find all this out."

Mercy half-smiled sheepishly at the ground. But her grin faded as the enormity of the situation began to settle in.

Their whole region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was defined by smartphones. Or rather, by other people's need for smartphones.

Foreign companies demanded exorbitant amounts of cobalt - a resource in which D.R.C. was naturally rich - as it was a crucial ingredient to fuel their production of the devices. And yet the riches that said companies poured into acquiring the resource remained almost entirely in the pockets of just a few politicians and businessmen: specifically, those willing to turn blind eyes to the unethical methods necessary to acquire it in sufficient amounts.

"How did you get here by yourself, Mercy?" Joseph asked raspily. His bright eyes darted around the edges of the clearing again. "What of the guards?"

Mercy shrugged. "I just ran, Mzee. Everyone is going crazy right now, running around, yelling things...the guards too. No one was paying attention."

Joseph huffed in amazement.

Sufficient acquisition of cobalt relied on an abundance of child laborers. Many children worked willingly, desperate to support their families and finding no other options within a broken system. Many, too, were kidnapped and trafficked into work by armed crews seeking riches - or at least, seeking enough money to survive on.

The patchwork militia responsible for Amani's position did not often lose track of its captors. Their greed - or desperation - kept them running a cruelly tight ship, most of the time.

Joseph rubbed his temple slowly. But if the phones were truly all dead...

At that very moment, a great crashing of brush signaled someone approaching nearby. The young girl and the old man immediately tensed, sharing a harrowed glance. At a curt nod from Joseph, Mercy made to hide behind the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. But before she or the Mzee could move further, a wiry teenage girl emerged from the brush in an explosion of shrubbery.

"Great Heaven, Amani!" Joseph exclaimed, relaxing visibly. "We thought you might have been one of the guards."

The girl straightened, wiping sweat from her forehead. She flashed a broad, almost manic smile at the old man. "Sorry, Mzee! But you have to hear this!" Her gangly frame was positively quivering with excitement.

Joseph raised his white-speckled eyebrows, nodding towards Amani. "I believe I have heard, my girl. The phones?"

Amani smiled at Mercy. "Of course she got here before me." She turned back to her elder, eyes wide and wild. "It's madness over there, Mzee. Everyone is running around like beheaded chickens."

Joseph shifted in his low seat, still squinting around. "I can imagine so, yes. They must all be very concerned." His tone did not rise to the occasion of Amani's excitement. Noting this, Amani responded with a timbre of even fiercer hope.

"Don't you see what this means, Mzee? Those twisted businesspeople won't be sticking around here long if the cobalt isn't useful to them anymore." Her eyes glinted in the firelight. "Nous sommes tous libéres."

Joseph was silent for a long moment. His wary eyes sparkled in return as he met the older girl's gaze. Then he let out a long, rattling sigh, and shook his wizened head in disagreement. "Hapana...we are not all free, child."

He raised a wrinkled hand to silence Amani's imminent protest.

"They will still have work for us to do," Joseph rasped, "and still have labor which requires exploiting."

Joseph hadn't been forced to mine cobalt for decades, of course; his age made his labor inefficient. But the ramshackle militia could have him keep a fire going, or roast a chicken or goat when necessary. That, and they knew his presence was a source of comfort to their many kidnapped young.

"But they're only here so that they can take every last piece of metal here for their damned phones!" Amani's voice wavered and cracked with emotion.

Joseph tutted at Amani's language. "How do we know the phones are going to stay off? What if they start working again in a couple of hours, or days?"

Mercy, silent throughout this interaction, watched with wide eyes as the two argued. Amani scoffed frustratedly, but proffered no further retort.

"Even if the phones shutting off isn't just a fluke, they'll find a way to put us back to use in no time," Joseph continued gently, "or find a new use, a new market, for all the cobalt." He leaned slowly forward, gazing intently at Amani. "They have more machines which can run on our suffering than the ones in everyone's pockets, mtoto."

Amani's shoulders drooped. Her strong bottom lip threatened to quiver. To have the hope of liberation stripped away so suddenly was a lot to bear. Mercy looked between Amani and Joseph with apprehension.

"But," Mzee Joseph continued quietly, "that doesn't mean that this doesn't change anything." He took Amani's hand, intensely calloused from the mines, in his own cracked and weathered one. Then he took Mercy's little hand too, and looked back and forth between the two girls.

"I believe...I believe this could still be your chance for freedom."

Amani's head perked up. She and Mercy exchanged a disbelieving glance.

"What do you mean, Mzee..?"

Joseph resumed his head-swiveling, making certain no more characters were set to bound out of the bushes. "You both have told me that the guards are in total disarray," he grunted, "ça c'est correcte?"

Both girls nodded fervently.

"Nzuri sana," Joseph murmured, "very good. Then you must leave, now, for the city." He directed his speech towards Amani. "You know the way - they have taken you on the road there many times now. If they are truly as panicked and mad as you have told me, they will think much of you two walking that way." His voice tightened as he continued. "Nevertheless, do all that you can to not be seen."

Mercy gripped the cord to her survival radio in bewilderment. Amani nodded intensely as Joseph spoke, not breaking eye contact. "I can get us there," she said hoarsely, "but where in the city should we go? There might be some guards there."

Joseph smiled with a grim sort of pride at Amani. She must have been ready for instructions like this for a long time. "The bus depot on the southwestern outskirts of town," he replied firmly, "Find Patrice, with the orange bus. He will let you on." Amani opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it. How Mzee Joseph knew all of this did not matter in this moment.

"When you are there, call me-" Joseph caught himself, glancing down at his useless phone. "Ah. No, I will just meet you there, as soon as I possibly can." He directed this last phrase towards Mercy, whose eyes had begun to fill with tears as the Mzee's directions poured out.

"I will meet you there, Mercy," he repeated. His eyes and voice were warm and full of reassurance. When the little girl buried her head in his chest, however, the Mzee gave Amani a significant look. The old man and the teenage girl understood each other. Mercy sniffled into his frayed canvas shirt.

He patted her head, squeezed Amani's hand, then pushed them both gently away from himself.

"Go."

The two girls stared at their Mzee.

How could it be that simple?

How could it be this sudden?

"I will see you soon," Joseph urged gruffly, "waste no more time. This is your chance."

Amani nodded again, then took Mercy's hand. "Let's go, Mercy."

Mercy held tight to her friend's hand, still stunned into silence. Then she tried to wave goodbye with the hand still gripping her radio, as Amani began tugging her into the woods.

Was freedom waiting somewhere beyond those trees?

Amani looked back at Joseph one last time, a strange expression on her face. Grief and wild determination mingled there. In a hoarse half-whisper, she cried, "We will find a way to tell the world this story, Mzee."

Then the girls disappeared into the brush.

Mzee Joseph kept facing that direction, still as obsidian, long after the two were no longer visible.

All the connectedness in the world, afforded by phones - all the ability for anyone and everyone to find the truth of their stories - had not led the world to care for the lost and exploited in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Joseph knew that Amani's farewell was meant well - that she was compelled to say it from a heart full of love and loss. But he was not certain that anything would change, no matter how well or far she told their story.

Some machines would never just decide to stop working.

But after today, after all of this, two children at least would be free. Two children would make it out - they had to. Joseph prayed so. And today, that would have to be enough.

A warm wind stirred the embers of Joseph's dwindling fire.

"Le monde, c'est cassé," he whispered, "Tout le monde c'est cassé."