I live opposite and next door to two parks and should consider myself lucky really, especially with two young children, but the reality is not so idyllic.
For one, the two parks are of the old-school variety, despite being only eight years old. By that, I mean they have the same, standard, dated toys as every other park in my area; slide, swings, roundabout and seesaw, all in the same boring metal, same basic design and same colours. But that is not a reason to be ungrateful, nor would I be if the parks were a) maintained properly by Aradippou municipality and b) not desecrated and destroyed by the hoodlums in my neighbourhood.
These parks – along with a myriad of their kind across Larnaca neighbourhoods – are a sorry sight to see. They are so dilapidated, overgrown and vandalised that we actually give them a wide berth, opting instead to get in a car and drive to some of the nice new ones with their elaborate play structures, landscaped gardens and less-standard toys. What a shame when we have two parks directly next door and opposite to us.
My ex-pat neighbour once remarked to me that he could not understand why we have so many parks. There is a law that a certain percentage of land in built-up areas needs to be 'green', therefore, you will find multiple parks in areas like mine, which are relatively new to development, with literally one every couple of hundred metres. At the time I didn't particularly like his comment and put this down to him not having young children. But I can see now that he is right. We do not need a park every few steps we take, especially when they are all the same and battered. Yes, we need green areas, but they should be just that – lush, green forests and gardens, with some, good quality parks intermittently. These fewer but better parks should have exciting, sturdy toys, be maintained by the municipality and above all, vandalism should not be tolerated.
As we speak, in the park directly opposite to my house, the hoodlums of the neighbourhood have smashed the slide to pieces, along with a bench. Furthermore, they have built a den with all manner of household junk (I won't ponder where it has come from) and are still letting off bangers and fireworks even though Easter is long behind us. They scream and chant late into the night.
Whilst I fully agree that children will be children and should have the freedom to shout and build and explore and, and, and… there is a fine line between them doing this and becoming a nuisance and pest. We all share the neighbourhood so why are their parents not checking up on what they are doing? Why do they allow them to run around till late at night letting off fireworks and smashing things up? What a sad indictment of society if they don't actually know that this is happening, although I suspect they do and turn a blind eye because it is not actually in their own property that the destruction is taking place.
As much as I love my neighbourhood in Aradippou, these parks are a shameful, ugly blot to our community, as are the disrespectful and aggressive children that destroy them.
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly, 10/05/14
