Amina Blackwood Meeks
LAST WEEK Wednesday I happened upon a very intense conversation between a female caretaker of a group of teenagers and a male security guard in the food court of a shopping centre in Liguanea. The subject of the discussion was a teenage girl. She was on the verge of being evicted from the shopping centre by the guard who, no doubt, was carrying out what he understood to be at least a part of his responsibilities. The youngster had been accused by the guard of 'making a public nuisance'. Before he was able to complete his assignment, however, he was halted by the adult caregiver.
Persistence on her part forced the guard to reveal that the youngster had been in the female bathroom talking and laughing with other members of her group. I was poised to intervene.
Why on earth would he have gone into the female bathroom at the sound of laughter? But the caregiver took a different route. How can you create a public nuisance from inside the bathroom? she wanted to know.
In the end she prevailed over the security guard and left with her young charges. There followed a gathering of security guards all of whom had their bit to say about how the incident should have been resolved. Finally, they found consensus on the fact, from their vantage point, that 'nowadays pikney jus rude and should stay out of the plaza'. The proverbial mout open and I restrained myself from intervening then. At the heart of the accusation was a view of teenagers as public nuisances, I thought.
As if to prove the point a child immediately sat on the concrete wall while the adult she was with placed an order for a meal.
The said security guard, assuming she was alone, ordered her off the wall. She dutifully obeyed. Not knowing what had happened her adult companion sat on that same wall while she waited to collect their order. The security guard saw but said nothing.
This security guard and others who follow similar orders, or conclude on their own about the rudeness of 'nowadays pikney' and where they do not belong are going to be very busy this summer season. There simply are not enough summer time activities for the thousands of youngsters who are faced with that seven to eight weeks break in between academic years.
That there is this great big void to fill is a manifestation of the fact that we simply have not given enough attention to the value of play and recreation for any age group. The most attractive thing about just any open land space these days seem to be in how many apartment buildings and paved parking spaces some enterprising developer could squeeze into it.
So where do we play? Who cares?
In the case of our children the neglect is palpable. We see enough schoolyards which are neither properly nor adequately supplied with play equipment and if we have not practically recognised the value of play and recreation to exploration and discovery then, we can hardly be expected to suddenly find the will and the means to do it just because it is summer.
Our children are at a tremendous disadvantage. Unlike their adult counterparts, they lack the experience on which to create meaningful recreational activities for and by themselves. And contrary to popular opinion, very few of them have the means or the desire to take up cyberhunting in place of up-close and personal social interaction. They also lack the funds to pursue what activities exist even if they were enough to include all of them.
In the end they do what teenagers do. They hang out. They seek out free entertainment such as walking through shopping centres just to look.
I suppose that the merchants might very well be annoyed that this increased human traffic does not bring increased sales. What a nuisance! And the poor children become the focus of the security guards whose job is to ensure that the thoroughfares are kept free of nuisances so that legitimate shoppers may find easy passage.
The real nuisance is the potential outcome of this tension in a country which is already operating on such a short fuse. What would have happened to that child in Liguanea had there not been someone to speak on her behalf? What if the person who represented her had not been so calm and reasoned? What if I had intervened? What if some merchant really felt that the guard had failed to discharge his responsibilities?
What if teenagers who are prevented from 'just looking' find some other activities to occupy themselves, like trying drugs for example? Like becoming plagues upon a society which treats them like pariahs because they do not involve themselves in 'meaningful activities' but provides not the outlets or the opportunities to make that a reality.
It is going to be another long hot summer especially for those adults who see children on holidays from school as a nuisance - public or private.
Amina Blackwood Meeks is a communications specialist.
