Dealing with young people

By Vatapuia Maiava 23 November 2016, 12:00AM

Salome Fa’afetai, from the village of Leusoali’i, says there is an urgent need for Samoa to deal with the behaviour of young people – especially the unemployed.

She is concerned that some youth just roam around without a care in the world when they are needed at home by their elders to help with chores.

 “A lot of the youth cause so much trouble,” she told the Village Voice.

“They just roam around instead of making themselves useful at home doing the chores.

“I think the root of the problem is the parents. The parents ought to teach their children as much as possible about how to live the Samoan lifestyle.

“They roam around doing whatever they want as if they don’t have a care in the world.”

Salome explains that the role of the village leaders is very important when it comes to the youth.

 “They try and get the youth in line and keep order around. They can discipline and teach the children who refuse to listen to their elders.

“It’s different from town where they don’t really enforce village leaders. Here in the village we try and cut down the negative attitude of the youth.”

But life in general is great according to Salome.

“Other than that, everything in my village is great,” she said.

“The village leaders are doing a great job with taking care of our village and everything is peaceful and great.

“The men and women committees are keeping everything together in the village so there’s nothing really I can complain about.”

Other than the issue she mentioned earlier, Salome says there are no other problems they face in the village.

“There are no issues I can think about because I know that we can always solve everything if we put our minds to it,” she said.

“Actually the only issue I can think of is when the children misbehave and do not listen to their elders. But it falls down to the parents to discipline them.

“It’s good if they take part in some cultural activities so that they can learn a thing or two.”

Asked if she preferred rural villages to urban villages she agreed.

“I prefer living here in the village to the urban areas,” Salome said.

“We have a lot more land that we can cultivate out here. We have access to many resources on both the land and the sea which we can make a living from.

“In town you can’t find the things that we have here.”

By Vatapuia Maiava 23 November 2016, 12:00AM
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