Immigrant Children Confound Tooth Fairy
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New Brunswick, NJ - Every year, thousands of children worldwide loose their teeth, trading milk teeth for permanent bicuspids and molars. Universally, it’s an exciting time, marking the beginnings of life as a “big boy” or “big girl”. The other big thing about losing your teeth is that the Tooth Fairy, no matter where you live in the world, brings gifts and money in exchange for discarded baby teeth.
Baba: One of the many absentee African fairies found running in Pixie Land.
Rituals vary, depending on part of the world you live in. In Africa, parents encourage their children to make a wish and throw their fallen teeth onto the roof top of their homes, with promises of the wish’s fruition within the year. In Western countries, young ones place their teeth under a pillow at night with the assurance that in the morning, there will be a dollar in its place (rates vary depending on the wealth of the family). What most people don’t know is that there is no one Tooth Fairy. There is actually an agency that employs fairies that work in assigned geographic territories, with guidelines that govern their activity. Modern global migration patterns have presented a challenge to the Agency, and many fairies are struggling to keep up with the times.
Immigrant African children in the Diaspora have presented a unique challenge to the Western fairies. Faithful to their forefathers’ practices, they have been tossing their old teeth on roof tops of their adoptive homes… with little or no results for the last 5 years. Desperate to stem the tide of complaints from disappointed customers, the agency contracted Baba, the African Tooth Fairy, to cover densely populated immigrant territory.
Using our connections, MaizeBreak transported two journalists into the mystical pixie realm to track down Baba. We wanted to follow up on how he is faring abroad and to monitor his progress.
“I don’t mind telling you that I am deathly afraid of heights,” said Baba. “I am terribly unqualified for this position.”
The truth is, Baba has failed to grant the wishes of native children for the last 150 years. Munching on a chocolate bar, he confided that the very thought of scaling a roof top makes him “quake in his little fairy boots.” A freak accident in 1858 caused his fear of heights. He refused to provide details, but mumbled something about a bird and “goat love”.
“The agency even outfitted me with these nifty tennis shoes,” Baba lamented. “But there is absolutely no way that I can retrieve the teeth and turn them into wishes. It’s just too hard!”
Baba has not yet informed the agency of his incompetency. Because it does not monitor African activity closely, the agency has been largely unaware that Baba has been absent from work and still collecting pay. Working abroad has presented quite the quandary for him. To circumvent the problems, Baba has teamed up with other minority fairies to fulfill his tasks.
“In America, I get the Mexican guy (he simply goes by ‘El’) to climb to roofs and throw the teeth to me,” said Baba. “I then run into the slumbering child’s room and slip his money under the pillow. Sometimes I leave some fairy sweat on the pillow…it’s sort of my signature.”
This has been the only way Baba has been able to keep his tooth quota up, as every fairy is required to turn in their retrieved teeth on a monthly basis. Baba admits that he is tired of keeping up the façade, and hopes to petition the Fairy Congress to get a new assignment, better suited to his skills.
“Being a fairy was supposed to be about decency and honor,” he cried, tears staining his satin dress. “Now it’s become about profit and quotas, and that’s one thing this African pixie has never been about!”
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