Kofi was twelve, and he lived near a beach where sea turtles laid their eggs every June. Every year he watched the tiny babies hatch at night and crawl down the warm sand to the sea, guided by the moonlight on the water. But this year a new hotel kept its lights on all night, and when the baby turtles came out of the sand, they crawled toward the bright windows instead, away from the sea.
Kofi could not sleep. Night after night he and his friends carried the baby turtles to the water in buckets, hundreds of small flippers scratching against the plastic. In the daytime they collected signatures from the neighbors and wrote a letter to the hotel manager, who answered that he was very busy. One night the manager finally came to the beach himself. He stood in the dark in his good shoes, and he saw hundreds of baby turtles walking the wrong way, toward his own windows. For a while he said nothing. "I will turn off the lights from nine to six during turtle season," he said quietly.
The next night, hundreds of tiny turtles crawled toward the moonlit water, and Kofi and his friends sat on the sand and, for once, had nothing to carry.