Swaydo’s Paper Plane It’s sunrise in the jungle, and 14-year-old Swaydo crouches in the tall grass of a clearing. He looks out over the green vistas all around him, and sees the top of the glowing orange sun peak above the horizon. But he’s waiting for something even more special than the sunrise. “Move over!” his big brother says, as he barges him out of the way anyway. Swaydo’s brother was very annoying, he wasn’t very good at being a big brother, he only wanted to impress the adults and be like them. Even now he was walking with the group of adult searchers, rather than his little brother. They were searching for planes – paper aeroplanes. Every few weeks, one solitary paper aeroplane would swoop down gracefully, mysteriously, from somewhere up in the mountains. Noone knew exactly where they came from, or who made them, and no-one had ever seen anyone up there in the mountains, which were impassable. But there was a collection of about 40 planes that had fallen in the last few years, onto the plains by the jungle where Swaydo lived. Some people, somewhere, were trying to tell them something. The jungle villagers called this secretive mountain community the Wisdom Tribe. This was because all the planes were made from parchment, covered with a strange writing, in a language that no-one could read, or had ever seen before. And besides that, no-one in Swaydo’s village, or any of the other villages for miles around, could make parchment as perfectly smooth and strong as these planes. One thing was for sure, whoever it was up there in the Wisdom Tribe knew a whole lot more about life than these villagers did. “Have you seen anything yet?” one of the searchers shouted to another “No!” came the reply from the other side of a field. “Don’t forget to check in the grass, in case we’re too late.” said another. Usually, the planes would fall when the explorers were out, as if the Wisdom Tribe were watching them, somehow. But it had been five weeks since the last one, the people were getting desperate. Swaydo brushed his hands through the grasses, kicking up dusty pollen into the brightening air. He was hungry, but he knew he wouldn’t get fed for a while today, if at all. There was barely anything to eat in these parts, besides a few shrivelled berries and leaf juices. The villagers would pray every morning and evening for the Wisdom Tribe to give them wisdom to know where to find more food, which bushes they could pick from, where the animals were they could hunt. But they heard nothing, most of the time. They relied on the older adults interpreting the writing on the planes. “The Tribe tells us to head south!” one man would announce, with the plane opened out on a lecturn. And the village would go south, but there wouldn’t be anything there. He’d got it wrong. “The Tribe tells us to look for the Bayobab trees in the east!” someone else would decide, but the Bayobab trees turned out to not make for very good eating at all, although they did make for good farts. Another man had got it wrong. “Perhaps” another man suggested “The Tribe would have us be patient, and wait in this place until the right time” But waiting proved worthless, and the right time seemed to never come.
“Curse the tribe!” they would argue, almost on a daily basis now. “Up there in their refuge in the sky, they don’t have regard for us. It’s their will to leave us with nothing but the morsels these dying trees spit out. Curse them and their inscrutable letters!” Wisdom from the tribe had become meaningless words to the rebellious village. It was hopeless. People were becoming ill, people were dying. People left the village often now, and never came back. They left to find places of more food, places of happiness. No-one knew if they ever found those things. Swaydo was tired from the early morning, and he’d walked a long way, trying to keep up with his brother and the adults. He sat down clumsily, just about able to look over the tall grass and see the rest of the group go on ahead. “I see something!” someone said “I think it’s a plane!” Swaydo perked up suddenly, not believing what he’d heard. Then he realised, that was his awful brother’s voice. Of all the people who could spot it, why did it have to be him?! Anyway, he tried to concentrate and see if there really was a plane in the sky. It usually was a false alarm, so he stayed sat down. “I see it too!” someone else said, they were all running around madly now, trying to see it and catch it as it descended. “I can’t see it! I can’t see anything!” Swaydo thought to himself, struggling to see in the dazzling sunlight, now the sun had fully risen up. Maybe, could it be?! After all this time, had the Wisdom Tribe given us something else? And maybe, just maybe, we could understand it this time. But suddenly there was a great shadow, and darkness covered Swaydo’s face. The grass around him went dull and seemed to stop swaying, and the searchers ahead quickly looked round. There was a tiger. Staring at them. Its massive, muscular body, prowling majestically out across the top of the hill, blocked the low sun for a second, and caught the attention and fear of everyone. It was walking right in front of Swaydo. He stayed sat down, trying to not shake with fear. It hadn’t seen him yet. He hoped it hadn’t smelt him. The searchers were silent as they stared back, as it walked towards them. Their silence turned to muttering, then they shouted, then they yelled, then they ran. All thoughts about the plane were gone - they ran for their lives, towards the safety of the village. The tiger, luckily, didn’t chase them. Something caught its attention back in the jungle in the other direction, and it paced slowly away. Swaydo finally breathed out. He lifted his head up to the sky, as if to thank someone, or some God, that might have been watching out for him. He opened his eyes, they adjusted to the light, and there it was. A paper plane. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A flock of birds flew over the horizon in the distance behind it, then it swooped down and across into the backdrop of the great green mountains, then down again into the shadow of the hills. It even seemed to slow down and gently turn as it dropped weightlessly into his open hands. He turned as he heard some branches cracking behind him, and saw the searchers and most of the village reluctantly emerging from the thick jungle after the tiger scare. They knew he’d got it. He looked down and, trying not to think of how long he had dreamt of this moment for, carefully unfolded the wings of the parchment plane. It didn’t have as much writing on it as they usually did - in fact he couldn’t see anything. He looked all over it, but couldn’t find any writing, then turned it over and saw, in plain English, “Ask, and it will be given to you.”
Swaydo thought for a second, then he realised. “It says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you!’” he shouted to everyone waiting to hear. “But we’ve asked so many times, we pray every day, and we hear nothing!” “No,” Swaydo replied, “we don’t ask them to give us food, we ask them to show us where the food is. We always want to know where it is ourselves, where it comes from, and we’ve spent so long trying to understand these planes and where they come from, that we forgot to ask the simplest thing. They can provide for us themselves. We’ll get nowhere relying on our own interpretations and our own wisdom and strength. We have to ask them.” There was silence across the villagers. Their heads were bowed low in dismay, realising they’d tried to save themselves and not really ask for help. Then some heads began to look up, in hope, at the mountain tops. Swaydo saw the hope in their eyes, and turned round to face the mountains. “Please, give us food,” Swaydo said. And the villagers echoed him, asking the same thing. He turned around to face the people again, and started laughing when he saw them. Appearing in the trees above their heads was abundant fruit, miraculously popping out from the foliage. They turned to see it themselves, and, laughing too, immediately started picking the fruit. Just a small shake of the branches was enough to make them fall down in a plentiful torrent. After a few minutes the gleeful villagers were hemmed in by bulbous, brightly coloured fruit, in piles and strewn all over the ground. There was enough food in just those few trees to last them for weeks. And there was enough joy that day to last them a lifetime.