‘oompa-loompas!’ everyone said at once. ‘oompa-loompas!’

‘imported direct from loompaland,’ said mr wonka proudly.

‘there’s no such place,’ said mrs salt.

‘excuse me, dear lady, but…’

‘mr wonka,’ cried mrs salt. ‘i’m a teacher of geography…’

‘then you’ll know all about it,’ said mr wonka. ‘and oh, what a terrible country it is!

nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world –

hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. a whang-

doodle would eat ten oompa- loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a

second helping. when i went out there, i found the little oompa-loompas living in tree

houses. they had to live in tree houses to escape from the whangdoodles and the

hornswogglers and the snozzwangers. and they were living on green caterpillars, and

the caterpillars tasted revolting, and the oompa-loompas spent every moment of their

days climbing through the treetops looking for other things to mash up with the

caterpillars to make them taste better – red beetles, for instance, and eucalyptus leaves,

and the bark of the bong-bong tree, all of them beastly, but not quite so beastly as the

caterpillars. poor little oompa-loompas! the one food that they longed for more than

any other was the cacao bean. but they couldn’t get it. an oompa-loompa was lucky if

he found three or four cacao beans a year. but oh, how they craved them. they used to

dream about cacao beans all night and talk about them all day. you had only to mention

the word “cacao” to an oompa-loompa and he would start dribbling at the mouth. the

cacao bean,’ mr wonka continued, ‘which grows on the cacao tree, happens to be the

thing from which all chocolate is made. you cannot make chocolate without the

cacao bean. the cacao bean is chocolate. i myself use billions of cacao beans every

week in this factory. and so, my dear children, as soon as i discovered that the oompa-

loompas were crazy about this particular food, i climbed up to their tree-house village

and poked my head in through the door of the tree house belonging to the leader of the

tribe. the poor little fellow, looking thin and starved, was sitting there trying to eat a

bowl full of mashed- up green caterpillars without being sick. “look here,” i said

(speaking not in english, of course, but in oompa-loompish), “look here, if you and all

your people will come back to my country and live in my factory, you can have all the

cacao beans you want! i’ve got mountains of them in my storehouses! you can have

cacao beans for every meal! you can gorge yourselves silly on them! i’ll even pay your

wages in cacao beans if you wish!”

‘ “you really mean it?” asked the oompa-loompa leader, leaping up from his chair.

‘ “of course i mean it,” i said. “and you can have chocolate as well. chocolate tastes

even better than cacao beans because it’s got milk and sugar added.”

‘the little man gave a great whoop of joy and threw his bowl of mashed caterpillars

right out of the tree-house window. “it’s a deal!” he cried. “come on! let’s go!”

‘so i shipped them all over here, every man, woman, and child in the oompa-loompa

tribe. it was easy. i smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and

they all got here safely. they are wonderful workers. they all speak english now. they

love dancing and music. they are always making up songs. i expect you will hear a good

deal of singing today from time to time. i must warn you, though, that they are rather

mischievous. they like jokes. they still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the

jungle. they insist upon that. the men, as you can see for yourselves across the river,

wear only deerskins. the women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all. the

women use fresh leaves every day…’

‘daddy!’ shouted veruca salt (the girl who got everything she wanted). ‘daddy! i want

an oompa-loompa! i want you to get me an oompa-loompa! i want an oompa-loompa

right away! i want to take it home with me! go on, daddy! get me an oompa-loompa!’

‘now, now, my pet!’ her father said to her, ‘we mustn’t interrupt mr wonka.’

‘but i want an oompa-loompa!’ screamed veruca.

‘all right, veruca, all right. but i can’t get it for you this second. please be patient. i’ll

see you have one before the day is out.’

‘augustus!’ shouted mrs gloop. ‘augustus, sweetheart, i don’t think you had better do

that.’ augustus gloop, as you might have guessed, had quietly sneaked down to the edge

of the river, and he was now kneeling on the riverbank, scooping hot melted chocolate

into his mouth as fast as he could.