By Gabriel Luryeyo
Madalena Lawino, 100, sits under her dilapidated grass-thatched hut as she watches the sun set. The centenarian lives with her two young grandchildren. They share the same house. In the distance lies the graves of her late husband and two sons. Ms Lawino returned from the camp for internally displaced persons 18 years ago. Since then, she has been struggling to rebuild her life.
“My husband died a few months after we returned to our original village. Shortly, my two sons passed on too. Now, I have to struggle and feed these two grandchildren they left behind,” she says.
Lawino lives in Lukung Village, Gem Parish, in Lalogi Sub County, Omoro District. She was one of those forced to abandon their villages for IDP camps during the LRA insurgency in Northern Uganda.
“I am on my own. I don’t receive stipends being provided by the government to older persons. I really don’t know what the problem is yet I provided my National Identity Card to the government officials,” she says.
Under the Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment (SAGE) programme, at least 200,000 Senior Citizens of 80 years and above are receiving cash support. Each receives 25,000 Shillings every month. The programme is being implemented by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
In Lukung Village, out of about 50 elders who have qualified for SAGE program, only 10 are accessing the fund. Marino Okoya, the Lukung Village Chairperson noted that the majority of the older persons in the area depend on well-wishers for survival. He noted that like any other district in Acholi sub-region, elderly persons in village are grappling with poor nutrition, ill health and lack of social protection.
Lawino, who says she’s now weak, worries that she might never receive the money. She says her knees hurt a lot and she suffers from persistent cough. “This worries me because I fear that one day, I may fail to wake up in the morning,” she says.
Her story is the norm in many rural settings where the elderly can barely survive. In communities like Lawino’s that have endured insurgency with people forced to live in IDP camps, social support systems are largely broken.
Lawino says she was born in 1924, though she doesn’t remember the precise month and date. At her age, she is the caretaker of her grandchildren, in a situation where people walk long distances to fetch water, gather firewood and work in gardens. “It is hard to live without money”, she says adding: “I need money to hire labour to cultivate food, repair my house and pay for medical bills. Age has eaten me up. I am too weak to go to the wilderness to cut grass to reconstruct my house.”
Her four daughters live several kilometres away at their martial homes. They rarely visit her.
Ms Mary Oywa, a Councilor representing Older Persons at the Gulu District Local Council noted that society has neglected the elderly. “Elderly people are living like dogs. Their condition is appalling. They are being neglected by family members,” she says.
“As a society, we need to treat elderly persons with dignity. They are a cornerstone of our society. They are our living library. They teach us everything about life and neglecting them is a curse,” she warns.
Among the Acholi people of northern Uganda, the traditional role of an older person is understood as sharing knowledge, advice and wealth, mediating domestic conflicts and guiding and caring for grandchildren. In return, it is believed that they were well-supported and loved by a larger family.
The relevance and position of older persons has, however, diminished in a modernising cash-driven economy. With urbanisation, a monetary or transactional value has been imposed upon kinship ties, disempowering a majority of older persons who are poor and cannot make economic contributions.
Data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) indicate that of the over 41 million people, 1.5 million are older persons. But the figures are projected to hit 5.5 million by 2050.
