If it takes a vil­lage to raise a child, then Blan­chisseuse is fail­ing.Too many Blan­chisseuse teenagers are be­com­ing out of con­trol, say sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty el­ders there.Teenagers drink al­co­hol, con­ceive chil­dren of their own through ear­ly un­pro­tect­ed sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty, and they dis­play a lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline that the el­ders feel has the sea­side vil­lage in a cri­sis.It is a cri­sis of bad par­ent­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and un­em­ploy­ment, just as much as youth­ful delin­quen­cy.

In a bid to re­store or­der, the el­ders are call­ing for the in­ter­ven­tion of com­mu­ni­ty po­lice and Ari­ma MP Rodger Samuel.On any giv­en day, teenage boys are spot­ted in bars con­sum­ing al­co­hol and smok­ing.They rou­tine­ly lime at street cor­ners, use ob­scene lan­guage, and fight with ri­val gangs from neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties such as La Fil­lette.Ed­u­ca­tion and learn­ing a skill are not pri­or­i­ties for these boys.

Sev­er­al girls, on the oth­er hand, have be­come moth­ers be­fore their time, get­ting in­volved in sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships with old­er men for mon­ey and dress­ing scant­i­ly in the clubs, ac­cord­ing to sources.These prob­lems have been on­go­ing for years, but are now es­ca­lat­ing, said the dis­tressed el­ders.Be­tween 2011 to Jan­u­ary 2014 there were 14 teenage preg­nan­cies in Blan­chisseuse, a source at the Min­istry of Health con­firmed on Thurs­day.Four of these preg­nan­cies were girls 16 years old.

These fig­ures were tal­lied by the Blan­chisseuse Health Cen­tre.On Feb­ru­ary 4, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh dis­closed that there were 2,500 teenage preg­nan­cies in the coun­try an­nu­al­ly.

'Kids rule their par­ents'

The re­mote beach­side com­mu­ni­ty has a pop­u­la­tion of 1,000, many of whom re­ly on fish­ing, agri­cul­ture and small busi­ness­es to sur­vive.Pres­i­dent of the Blan­chisseuse Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil Edric Elie be­lieves that ir­re­spon­si­ble youth be­hav­iour is de­stroy­ing the life of the com­mu­ni­ty. He placed the blame square­ly on the shoul­ders of mis­guid­ed par­ents who were not tak­ing con­trol of their chil­dren.

"You know, it have a store in town call Kids Rule," he said: "Well, in Blan­chisseuse, the kids rule their par­ents, and they want to blame so­ci­ety and every­body else for the break­down in fam­i­ly life to­day," Elie said."It boils down to poor par­ent­ing. Par­ents on the whole have a lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude. They just don't care," he said.Elie said many of the par­ents are young and are un­able to firm­ly guide their own chil­dren, who are now go­ing astray.

Elie: No good ed­u­ca­tion,no com­mu­ni­ty life for kids

Last year's re­sults in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate at the Blan­chisseuse Sec­ondary School, Elie said, were un­sat­is­fac­to­ry. How­ev­er, this could not be ver­i­fied by school prin­ci­pal Phillip Car­lo, who said he could not com­ment on school mat­ters when con­tact­ed on Feb­ru­ary 7."When they leave school, they can't save a cent, but they sav­ing hate," Elie said.Elie said cours­es of­fered to teenagers would sel­dom peak their in­ter­est, while par­ents who are in­vit­ed to com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings would not show up.

Asked why girls as young as 13, 14 and 15 are seen late at nights with old­er men on the beach­es in the area, Elie said this was the norm."The girls would go with men who have funds. They would use the mon­ey to buy out­fits...nice clothes. The ques­tion peo­ple are ask­ing is: Where are their par­ents when the chil­dren are out­side?"Elie said he knows of two school­girls who got preg­nant in the vil­lage.Asked if the ba­bies are pro­vid­ed for by the fa­thers, Elie re­spond­ed:

"You are ask­ing me a mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion, but the an­swer is no. The thing about it is... they do not even tell their par­ents who is the fa­ther of their child."Elie said the prob­lem is ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the fact that vil­lagers would not speak out on per­ti­nent is­sues af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

Since last year, Elie said, their com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and pavil­ion have been un­der re­pairs, while jobs are few and far be­tween."There is noth­ing to keep these young­sters oc­cu­pied in a mean­ing­ful way," Elie said.

Charles: Vil­lagers too se­cre­tive

Al­so ex­press­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was for­mer pres­i­dent of the Blan­chisseuse Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil Owen Charles and his wife Loney, both el­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty.Owen, 81, said boys in the vil­lage are not aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined and not in­ter­est­ed in ob­tain­ing a skill to make them­selves men.In­stead, they pre­fer to sit at the street cor­ner and "cuss, fight, or kick ball" rather than do some­thing pro­duc­tive.He said what was equal­ly dis­turb­ing was the fact that sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty among teenage girls is kept hush-hush in the close-knit com­mu­ni­ty.

"You would hear peo­ple talk­ing un­der their breath about a girl or girls in­volved in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty, but that is as far as it goes. Wrongs are com­mit­ted, but it would nev­er reach the ears of the po­lice."Owen said long ago, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary stu­dents were lec­tured by the po­lice.The sec­ondary school stu­dents were ad­vised to "con­domise" when hav­ing sex to pre­vent sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases and un­want­ed preg­nan­cies, while pupils in the pri­ma­ry schools were taught fam­i­ly val­ues and re­spect for their par­ents and el­ders.

This, Owen said, need­ed to be rein­tro­duced."The po­lice need to ask par­ents and chil­dren to come out to­geth­er so we could tack­le these prob­lems," Owen said.In some in­stances, Owen said, boys would drop out of sec­ondary school, pre­fer­ring "to walk up and down the road whole day. They are los­ing di­rec­tion."Loney, 84, agreed that par­ents had failed in their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and were not set­ting lim­its for their chil­dren, who were do­ing as they please.

"The chil­dren have very lit­tle am­bi­tion. Ed­u­ca­tion, to them, is not a pri­or­i­ty. From the time you be­come a teenag­er you could do what you want and go where you want. There is no con­trol by par­ents. There is no dis­ci­pline. It's time par­ents wake up. They bring these chil­dren in­to the world... they have a right to take care of them."Long ago, Loney said, chil­dren were root­ed in re­li­gion, which helped them to de­ci­pher right from wrong.

"Why would a par­ent al­low their teenage daugh­ter to wear a hal­ter top to church? That is not for church. Miss, this is hurt­ing us be­cause that is not what I know and that is not what I ex­pect from young peo­ple. They are not grow­ing up with any spir­i­tu­al val­ues."Loney said the Blan­chisseuse Po­lice do not in­ter­act with vil­lagers and work with fam­i­lies who are go­ing through dif­fi­cult times."Po­lice does come and po­lice does go. They do not mess with any­body," Loney said.

–re­port­ing bySHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI