Zaitun’s Vision

I am Zaitun, I am 11 years old in 2020.

When I wake up in my vision of the future, I smell doggies and animals, greenery and fresh air: NOT polluted air. I feel my dog with me on my bed, I don’t live with anyone else, just my dogs and animals. I get up and read a little, one of my own books or maybe something else. I would then feed my chickens and goats. I live with my ageing parents nearby, on the same property, with a small community including my brother. He has children. There are no cars, there are one or two, but it’s fairly rare to see a car – the same way people once used to point to planes, now young children point to cars. Most people use goat carts. There is a local currency, but there still is a national currency, but you only use it for holidays and we don’t often go on holidays. There aren’t supermarkets, sometimes we have little farmer’s markets where people can trade, and where we are there is a strong community, we all know each other and look out for each other. When my dog was lost last week, neighbours came by to try and help find her, it wasn’t just that you put up a poster and look on your own, everyone tried to find her. It was quite a newsworthy event!

COVID has passed, there is still COVID but it isn’t a threat anymore. When people get sick, they use community herbologists who make local medicine working with the Traditional Custodians of the land. We have asked the Traditional Custodians that we could use and benefit from their knowledge before we set the herbologists up.

We sometimes use electricity: we use computers if we really need something from overseas or a different state, which is the same across the world. We do keep in touch with friends using the postal service, rather than messages. Say you wanted to chat with family overseas, we do do that, but rarely.

We sometimes buy food: once as a week I meet with my extended family and we have a huge dinner, with my parents, my brother and his family and all our pets. Usually, I just cook over a wood-stove, sometimes we cook together and sometimes we don’t.

There is some climate change, but we are dealing with it. There isn’t really a Prime Minister, there are citizens’ assemblies and people’s assemblies and children do get selected sometimes, as long as they can speak for themselves and if they have permission. There has been a movement to ensure children have a say in things.

If there’s a big, major thing across the whole state, or more than one council, if that happens, then sometimes we would all come together and have a huge assembly together to solve the problem.

What we wear depends on what we are doing – if we are gardening, or cooking. I mostly work with animals. But if we’re going to public gatherings, we wear whatever we deem suitable. But you can’t go to, like, a public gathering or a wedding and wear pyjamas or anything!

There are sometimes plays or concerts with the community. As a family, we have concerts every Friday and each of us plays an instrument.

We also have an outside bath for summer – but we do sometimes use it in the winter!