Gun culture.

Posted by: Nic

As I have mentioned before, we volunteer at a community garden, Seeds, which helps socially disadvantaged children and teenagers. Seeds is in a bad neighborhood, which is quite intentional.

Yesterday Sal and I were at Seeds, working in the cold sunny weather with one of the supervisors, a wonderful guy called Obie, and three school students. It was noon and we were digging new garden beds when a series of gun shots rang-out only 50 meters from where we were standing. I didn’t see what happened but one of the teenagers said later that a white car pulled up, fired down a side street and then drove away. We all stood around in stunned silence. I had thoughts running through my head like – Should I call the police? Should we drop to the ground? Should we see if anyone is hurt? I looked at Obie but he just stood there quietly watching carefully with a very serious expression. No one was hurt, apparently. There was no reaction from any of the people on the street or on the front verandas of their houses. After a moment they all went back to what they were doing, as did Obie and the students. No police arrived. The teenagers said it is a common occurrence.