By Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to the killing of 17-year-old Tafari Browne and again to violence among young people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), with the view being that there are things no government, no police force and no school will ever be able to do for a child that only a family can do for them.
Early on the morning of Oct. 9, Tafari Browne, a form three student of the West St. George Secondary School, was found on a piece of land in Arnos Vale. Local reports say he had about 28 stab wounds. He was taken to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital and he was in intensive care there until he died on Oct. 12. The police have not said publicly what led to the attack and nobody has been charged.
We on A View from the Outside know nothing whatsoever about Tafari’s family and nothing said here is a comment on his family or on how he was raised. Good families lose children to violence — in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and everywhere in the world. Any Vincentian who sits in judgment over a grieving household because of a news report should be ashamed. So this week’s view is not about the Browne family. It is about all Vincentian families, including those who will be sitting in that hospital, funeral homes and funeral services next year if nothing changes.
Violence among young Vincentians is a nothing new. In fact it is a crisis and we on A View from the Outside have addressed it on three occasions, today being the fourth. In March, the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force, in conversation with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of National Security, told Vincentians what is going on in our schools. They indicated that bullying, gang violence, fights among students and harassment online were prevalent among Vincentian youth. The police reported that weapons and marijuana were found on the premises of several schools.
In September, the Minister of National Security, St. Clair Leacock, told Vincentians that at least seven students had been arrested and that he was not talking about stealing mangoes. He said they were arrested for firearms, burglaries and serious assaults. It has also been reported that some of our schoolchildren now call themselves members of groups known as the 6ixx and the 7even.
We on A View from the Outside ask – are Vincentians really paying attention to the reports of youth violence in our country? We hear reports of seven schoolchildren arrested for guns, breaking into people’s houses and beating people up. School children!
Every single one of those children went home to a family that night. Somebody washed their uniforms and put food on the table in front of them. Somebody had the opportunity, if they were looking, to notice that a boy or a girl had money they could not explain, clothes nobody bought them, friends with whom they are not familiar, or a bag they did not want anybody to open.
Guns and knives are not tools used at school. If these weapons are being brought into school by students, then the family needs to play a greater role in knowing who their children or wards are and what they are doing. Parents and guardians should not be afraid to report their children and wards to the police if they know they possess dangerous weapons or are involved in gangs or violence. It might be painful but you will be doing them a favour in the long term.
When the death of Tafari Browne was reported, the Minister of Education said he was told of a very heartbreaking case of a lack of empathy from some of the students, and that it really shook him up. Many of the children were grieving. Some, it seems, were not. Vincentians should ask themselves where a child is supposed to learn empathy. Empathy is not only taught at school in a health and family life or religious education class on a Thursday afternoon. A child learns it at home, from watching how the adults in their household speak to each other, how they treat older persons and whether anybody in that house ever says sorry. Children should be taught and made to understand that if they can be anything in this world, it is to be kind.
So what can a family actually do to save our children that no government can? A family can know where a child is on a Friday night. Surely families know whether their children are hanging out at the hotspots like Massy carpark and the bus stop in Richmond Hill, where it is reported that hundreds of young people gather after school in their uniforms for hours, supposedly liming. It is reported that a lot of bullying and fighting take place at these hotspots. This is unacceptable.
Parents and guardians should make it their business to know the names of their child’s or ward’s friends and the names of those friends’ parents. Check your children’s mobile phones because Vincentian young people (like young people the world over) live half of their life inside mobile devices.
Criminals and gang leaders communicate via these mobile devices. If you notice your child or ward carrying two mobile phones, that is cause for concern. One could be a burner phone, which is a phone used by criminal elements to communicate with each other. Fights and other criminal activities are usually filmed and passed around for entertainment. Adults who are paying attention can help our youth.
But we on A View from the Outside are not going to pretend that this is all simply a matter of parents trying harder, because that would be dishonest and every Vincentian listening knows it.
The grandmother raising her grandchildren has been a feature of Vincentian life for decades. She educated half of the country. The greatest economist without a university education one can find is a grandmother raising her grandchildren because their mother, in most cases, has gone abroad to seek a better life. Many Vincentian teachers, nurses, policemen and lawyers came out of modest households with little or no money in them but the children raised in them had respect for others, including their peers.
The world in which children are now growing up has changed. Cyberbullying did not exist in the 1980s and 1990s, neither did a telephone in a bedroom or smartphones. The idea of a grown man or woman putting a gun in the hand of a child in SVG 30 or 40 years ago was unheard of.
There are also parents working two and three jobs who cannot be home when school is over, because if they don’t, the rent won’t be paid or there would be no food on the table. So we on A View from the Outside know how difficult it can be for parents and guardians to be present for their children and wards when the economy is like a piece of ‘meat hard to boil’ to quote calypsonian GAO.
There is also a limit to what any household can do. No family, however strong, can outbid a group that is offering a boy or girl money, status, protection and a set of friends who make them feel like somebody. When a boy or girl has nothing to do after three o’clock, no money in their pocket and nobody expecting anything of them, the 6ixx and the 7even gangs become attractive recruitment agencies. So the state authorities do have a job here, not to replace the family but to help the people who are actually raising children to save our youth.
So our suggestions this week are not for the government. They are for Vincentian families. Know where your child or ward is and who they are with. Know what is on their mobile phones. It will make them angry and they will complain that you do not trust them, but keeping your child or ward alive matters more than keeping them pleased with you.
Engage with your child or ward’s school. Get to know their teachers because the teacher who knows your face in September is the one who will telephone you in January when something small is still small. Parents and guardians should look out for each other. Get to know the parents or guardians of your child or ward’s friends. This can also be an avenue to share ideas and burdens because adults too need to decompress and destress.
So when somebody tells you that the government must do something about the violence among our young people, agree with them, because it must. Then ask them what time the children in their own house came in last night. Ask them when they last looked at their mobile phone. Ask them whether they know the names of their child’s friends.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
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