FLASH
FICTION
Not a Hill of Beans
by
Shelagh Watkins
I belong
to a large group of workers. There are two hundred and eighteen million of us working around the world. I am lucky; my present
work isn't too risky. One hundred and twenty-six million in this group are involved in work that is harmful to their safety
or health.
Like me,
my younger sister and brother are HIV-positive. My parents both died of AIDS in 2005. That's when we went to live with my
uncle's family. We needed money for medicines, so I found work as a ‘rag picker’ sorting through garbage for recycling
waste -- paper, glass, metal, plastic and cardboard -- dangerous work for five to eight dollars per month.
One day,
a large four-wheel drive car turned off the nearby highway with two men inside. They parked the car and walked over to a small
group of rag pickers. I carried on working. One of the men called me over, "That's hard work for less than ten dollars a month.
I can find you work that pays five times as much as that. Come over here. Listen to our offer."
"No thanks,"
I replied.
Although
I'd heard about workers being offered better work with higher pay, after they left, I never saw them again to know if it worked
out or not. There was no work around here paying that kind of money.
The man
walked over to me and said, "Don't you want to make more money? Look at your friends. They're coming with us for a better
life."
When I looked
over, I could see the rag pickers walking towards the car and climbing into the back seats. I said I still wasn't interested.
I knew I would never see any of them again and, if I joined them, I would never see my family again.
That was
my last thought. I felt a blow to the back of my head and passed out. When I came round, I was inside the car speeding along
the highway.
I never
did see my family again. I'll die soon because I don't have any money for medications. In the meantime, I'm one of two hundred
and eighteen million slaves around the world. I am ten years old.
I was born
in Mali
but I now work on a plantation in Ivory Coast.
I work twelve-hour days in scorching heat, picking beans from cacao trees. They say the beans are made into chocolate. What
is chocolate? I've never seen any.
Shelagh
Watkins © 2007
http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk/
Except for those with a phobia, flying has always been the stuff of dreams among all ages and, in this
age of technological wonders, flying in space has become an integral part of this dreamland. As well as being the stuff of
daring do, flying is full of mystery and laden with symbolic escapism, lifting us above the daily grind of adulthood and the
growing fears of childhood, and human pettinesses from gossip to bullying, which detracts all age groups from the joy of living.
In Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine, Shelagh Watkins takes us on a flight of fancy, both metaphorical
and literal, through these dreams, fears and joys. We are taken rolling and looping in skies through clouds of bereavement,
sibling antagonism, and human spitefulness, into a brighter but mysterious world of computer systems, then onward and upward
into the heavens and among the planets themselves. Closure of the stormy sky issues, through which child heroes Emmelisa and
Dell have struggled, is eventually approached in the final pursuit of Mr. Planemaker's physics-defying Trail of Light, during
which we are constantly surprised.
While all
this may sound a bit heavy for kids to read or for a bed-time story, and while it is thought provoking for adults, the yarn
is a compulsive tale for kids, spun around daily routines and banalities mixed with fantasy elements and outrageous characters.
The unashamedly corny names for the latter will bring a chuckle even to the sworn pun-hater like me. Who has not known a school
brat like Mayja Troublemaker and someone with as little spark as her uncle Verry Boringman?
The escape route from these pains in the neck emerges gradually via a series
of encounters, first at a strange house being worked on by Anne R Keytect, Bill Dare, Joy Nair and Dek Orator of Dream Homes
Inc, then on to Whiz Kid Computer Maintenance in Virtual Realty. Mr. Wizard Kidd leads us further into Hardwareland where
many of the workings of computer operating systems are revealed to us with greater insight than many a manual, though in this
case the user interface smacks more of magic than of a keyboard. In the CPU building things rapidly progress toward the (virtual)
reality of the Planemaker's Flying Machine PH1. Then, at an ever increasing rate we head with Emmelisa for space itself, with
the help of valet Sue Tassistant, coordinator MishOn Control, and master pilot/instructor Astrow Naught. Thereafter, on a solar system tour, some of the strands of the
story are tied up, in ways readers must find for themselves or I will spoil the climax.
So, in the
end, what does it all mean? I am not sure that I know, or even that Shelagh Watkins does, though surely Cosmos Planemaker
the magical family cat knows, if anyone does. What I do know is that this is a refreshing and unusual kids' story which I,
as a hard-nosed scientist - albeit with magic as a hobby - had to read to the end, and that it will likewise enthrall children
readers and bedtime story tellers alike. So buy it, lie back, and enjoy it with, or even without the kids.
Professor
John C. Brown
Astronomer Royal for Scotland
Dept. of Physics and
Astronomy
University of Glasgow
Scotland,
U.K.
