The intermediaries stocked the kids in that room overnight and then in the morning someone comes to take them to Ivory Coast. The room, he says, has not been used in months because a new awareness campaign in Mali has forced the business underground. But, even today, it is easy to see how children can be smuggled across the border. A wooden boom gate is all that divides one of Africa's poorest nations from one of its wealthiest. One hour outside Sikasso, the border post assumes a carnival atmosphere as hundreds of people wander across the international boundary with wobbling towers of wares stacked on their heads.
Guards sit under trees and fan the hot air with their caps.
Teenagers targeted for cocoa plantations are frequently taken to the central Ivorian town of Bouake. Younger kids, with the most nimble fingers, land in cotton-growing regions that lie just across the border near Korhogo. There, many children report being locked into a big house, where a new set of intermediaries take control and make the final sale. Everyone in the network takes a cut of the profit along the way. Good money for a few days' work.