Peeping Tom – At the end of the crooked path

Jun 23, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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For years, Guyanese stunned by the senseless killings in our society, especially the slaughterers at Lusignan, Bartica, Agricola and Eccles, have wondered how civilized persons could commit such beastliness on their fellow human beings.

There is now an answer to this question. We can now better understand how it is that the armed Buxton gang could have so cold-bloodedly, remorselessly and so senselessly snuffed out the lives of innocent citizens.

These killings were done by a gang comprised mainly of children too young and too manipulated to appreciate the value that should be placed on life.

The feared Buxton gang has turned out to be comprised of persons who are still in their teens.
They were too young and immature, and this was exploited by their recruiters. With a gun placed in their hands, these young men felt all-powerful.

When the mother of one of them tried to counsel him away from his ill-begotten path, he told her that the village had a lot of cochore and “dem gat fuh dead.”

It takes some sickening thought process to simply kill someone who has not provoked or done you anything.

But it takes mindlessness to simply see innocent children and to slaughter them like cattle in their sleep.

It could only have taken child soldiers to have carried out such brutality, their young minds already poisoned by their involvement with hardened criminals.

In the final analysis, excuses do not matter. This terrible development is a result of poor parenting. Sometimes, however, parents cannot control all the variables. Things do not always work out as scripted.

Every parent who looks into the eyes of their child when that child is a baby desires the best for him or her. Fate and circumstances are, however, not static, and sometimes things do not turn out the way we wish.

Sometimes, also, parents sow the seeds of their children’s waywardness through their own abusive and violent behaviours.

Despite this, I have never known of a parent, however errant to his or her child, who did not unconditionally love their children. But it does not matter. Ultimately, parents, no matter how stacked the odds are against them, must take responsibility for their children.

Making all manner of excuses and deflecting blame does not solve the problem. Solving the problem begins with first owning up to one’s responsibility, accepting that responsibility, and then doing something about it.

I do not care who is involved, if any of my grandchildren should every run astray of the good training to which they are exposed; if ever they should find themselves seduced into the ring of criminals, I am going to go wherever the criminals are and get them out of there, because it is my responsibility to take responsibility for my grandchildren.

I am not going to allow any of my offspring or their offspring to find themselves under bad influence.
Quite a few young men from the Buxton and Friendship area on the East Coast of Demerara were infatuated by the power of the armed criminals exhibited in Buxton.

They saw in that power an escape from their own helplessness, and always having to answer to their elders.

And so they became inducted into a life from which there was one sudden and quick end, six feet below the soil.

These kids must have been warned about the dangers to which they were exposing themselves.
But youth is that time when anything seems possible. With a gun in their hands, they must have believed that they were men who could tangle with other men. These youths were carried away by delusions on invincibility.

Today worms are eating away at their bodies, while their parents wonder what they could have done that they did not do.

A few days ago, I saw a political advertisement. It showed a picture of a mom with her baby son in her lap. She was addressing the Republican nominee John Ma Cain.

She mentioned how he had said that he was prepared to keep American troops in Iraq for the next one hundred years.

Then she said plainly to him that for such purposes he could not have her little baby. It was a powerful ad.

Every parent should make a similar pledge. They should pledge that they would not allow their children to get mixed up with any criminal gangs.

They should say to the criminal masterminds out there, “Sorry, you can’t have my little Johnny. I will not allow it.”

Keep your children in line. Be careful about the company they keep. Do not allow them to go astray. If they are living under your roof, they have to account for their actions each minute of the day.

Love them, but also ensure with all your energy that they walk the straight and narrow path.

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