16 The Oompa-Loompas
‘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 infested¹ 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 galloping² back for a
second helping³. 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 caterpillars⁴, and
the caterpillars tasted revolting, and the Oompa-Loompas spent every moment of their
days climbing through the treetops looking for other things to mash⁵ up with the
caterpillars to make them taste better – red beetles⁶, for instance, and eucalyptus⁷ 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 craved⁸ 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

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