Pabi and I met when he was four, as my neighbour and part of our extended family. He thinks he’ll be an author when he is an adult. Seems he already is. He read this at the Earthed launch, and reflected on his own writing like few writers can.
PABALLO NYAKALE
Lynedoch EcoVillage resident,
Grade 7 scholar, Spark Lynedoch,
Stellenbosch, South Africa
visiting earth
My name is Qwan and I am a Biquizildin from Planet Oolock in the belt of Orion. My father allowed me to travel to Earth with my friends - Zorb and Vox’la - for my school project to see how different species co-exist. Luckily I have the ability to aparate, that is to transport myself without any effort at all. But, since it was 104 Resera (in human terms that’s about 1300 lightyears) it did take a little longer than my usual immediate mental travel. About 4 minutes actually. We put on oxygen masks in case we landed in space in the middle of nowhere. Better to be able to breathe!
We reached Earth, so excited. We landed just at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. “WOW” Zorb said, “It’s so cool”. “Yes, definitely” Vox’la agreed. The planet wasn’t perfectly round or nearly as big as mine, but very lovely. Most of the planet had a beautiful shade of blue. The rest was green or golden brown. It also had amazingly shaped pieces of land.
We decided to go to a place called Canada. It had so many mountains when we tried to count we lost track! We found a mountain that we liked the most. The angle we were looking at it from was perfect. The peak of the mountain blocked some of the sunlight. It was like the sunlight spread across the corners of the world. We used a human visual capturing device called a camera so that we could put the photograph on our projects. No one on our planet would ever have seen something this beautiful.
We all thought that Earth was an amazing planet.
“Let’s go and ask what the other species think of their planet” I said.
I put my hand on a tree. I found I had a super-power! Not only could I aparate, but I could also communicate with this tree and the more-than-human world!
I felt a vibration. Every second the vibration grew stronger and stronger… like … like it was … angry. It said that it was angry and sad. Humans had been chopping down its friends and ruining their home. They could no longer be the lungs of Earth.
I found I could breathe under water. We never believed possible the beauty in the seas. Again, we could somehow understand the depth of the whales’ sonar. They wanted to know why Earth’s youngest species, humans, behaved the worst? As if they did not know how to be. As if they did not know the lore of the land.
My father was sending telepathic messages to aparate back. I loved Earth. My planet was filled with technology, so smart. But no nature.
Earth is a planet that I love, yet most humans take for granted.