Across the coun­try, gangs are wag­ing bloody turf wars against each oth­er but in San Fer­nan­do, there is one man who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly keeps ri­val gangs at bay us­ing his nat­ur­al tal­ent as a wood­work­er.

Ju­nior Bis­nath, known as the con­struc­tive ter­mite, de­votes his time to teach­ing chil­dren the art of stilt walk­ing. Some of them are the chil­dren of ri­val gang mem­bers who come from de­pressed ar­eas like Pleas­antville, Mon Re­pos, Em­bac­cadere, Mara­bel­la and La Ro­maine but when they come to Bis­nath's home, they learn dis­ci­pline, peace, and re­spect.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bis­nath said he has trained more than 3,000 chil­dren free of charge over the past 25 years. Many who have mas­tered the art of stilt walk­ing have found work in the Unit­ed States. The chil­dren look up to Bis­nath as a fa­ther fig­ure with whom they share their ex­pe­ri­ences of ne­glect and trau­ma.

Every af­ter­noon, Bis­nath could be seen teach­ing the chil­dren to walk on stilts in the un­du­lat­ing hills of San Fer­nan­do. Some are so poor that Bis­nath even pro­vides meals, cloth­ing and guid­ance to them.

In an in­ter­view at his mod­est home, Bis­nath said it was his way of giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty.

"I was born in San Fer­nan­do and I grew up on Broad­way. My par­ents had 14 chil­dren and I was the last son. I failed Com­mon En­trance twice and nev­er at­tend­ed sec­ondary school but I al­ways loved wood­work. My teacher told me this was a sa­cred job be­cause Christ was a wood­work­er," Bis­nath said. De­spite his fail­ure, Bis­nath per­se­vered and joined a wood­work class at the In­dus­tri­al Arts Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do. His teach­ers Joan Yuille Williams and Clive Mo­hammed en­cour­aged him to be the best in his field.

"When I was 15, I left pri­ma­ry school and start­ed to do work with Mr Bar­row. We nev­er ran out of work and I used more hand tools but I want­ed to learn how to use wood­work­ing ma­chines. I was in­tro­duced then to Cos­mic Wood­work Fac­to­ry. Mr Ro­dr­erick Williams was the boss and I learnt to build all kinds of fur­ni­ture. I stayed with that job for 43 years," Bis­nath said.

He said in 1988 dur­ing the last Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions he and his two friends Mc­Fos­ter Joseph and Charles Far­row de­cid­ed to do an ex­hib­it of the wood­work and came up with the name Con­struc­tive Ter­mites.

Bis­nath was al­ways mind­ful about the de­vel­op­ment of his city and hav­ing grown up in Carl­ton Lane, he mixed with the de­pressed and un­der­priv­i­leged.

"Back then my neigh­bour Hol­lis Clifton who is now a me­dia cam­era­man de­cid­ed to form the Carl­ton Lane Com­mu­ni­ty group and we wrote to the Min­istry of Cul­ture ask­ing for some funds to do stilt walk­ing with the Kil­i­man­jaro School of the Arts. We did a one-day work­shop with Glen De Souza and be­cause of my skill in wood­work­ing it was easy for me to build stilts," Bis­nath re­called.

Sup­ply­ing the Amer­i­can cir­cus with pro­fes­sion­al stilt­walk­ers

To­day, he con­tin­ues to share his knowl­edge freely with the youths of Co­coyea, La Ro­maine, Pleas­antville, and Em­bac­cadere.

Bis­nath said he tar­gets chil­dren from de­pressed ar­eas be­cause he knows they have the po­ten­tial to ex­cel.

"Even if you're not bright in school, stilt walk­ing in­stils self-con­fi­dence and dis­ci­pline. It makes you feel on top of the world. It builds self-es­teem, pa­tri­o­tism and na­tion­al­ism, qual­i­ties of a good cit­i­zen," Bis­nath added. Asked what were his biggest achieve­ments, Bis­nath said it was very grat­i­fy­ing to see his stu­dents ex­cel. He said since 2007, his school has been sup­ply­ing the Amer­i­can cir­cus with pro­fes­sion­al stilt walk­ers.

"Amer­i­ca looks for the best and I pride my­self that my stu­dents can be the best in the world. Apart from this, my stu­dents get in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure. We went to Ger­many with the So­ca War­riors in 2006 and in 2014 we went to Zim­bab­we to train moko jumbies.

"I have al­so been to Eng­land and Pana­ma to train moko jumbies. I trained the youngest ba­by in the world Ojah Bis­nath to walk in four-inch stilts when he was 11 months old. I al­so trained Mil­ton Mona, 76, the old­est per­son to walk in stilts at Skin­ner Park," he added with a proud smile.

So what does Bis­nath plan for the fu­ture?

Hav­ing re­tired on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2017, Bis­nath is now de­vot­ing all of his time to youth de­vel­op­ment.

He is cur­rent­ly in the process of build­ing over his school as well as a mu­se­um filled with arte­facts he has col­lect­ed over the past 40 years.

Bis­nath is adamant that he builds his lega­cy us­ing his own funds.

"I want to do this on my own. I have lots of arte­facts that I have col­lect­ed and I hope to doc­u­ment the cul­ture and arts of T&T through the eyes of a San Fer­nan­di­an," Bis­nath added.