Old age and the third world

I remember so clearly the last time I took my father to see a doctor. The words the nurse who was checking his blood pressure said have been ringing in my head today, almost 4years later. "He is old anyway", she said. My father was 67years old then and from the way I see it he was not exactly an old man. These words were to be a curse to us to his death for on the day he died, as I walked towards his bed, the nurse who was making some last notes about me, looked at me and said, "He was old anyway".

I was very bitter and dissappointed in her expression and kind of got the idea in my head that maybe, just maybe the nurses and doctors had not given him their best because "He was old anyway". The anger I felt that day was beyond any anger I have ever felt before, but I did not speak, I was after all here to bury my father, nothing more.

As I waited in an office at the hospital, I began to look at the world around me. You know you never really realise how terrible things are in my country until you visit a government hospital. I watched a young woman, hardly older than me sobbing quietly in the corner. She was speaking softly to an older woman about how she had no idea how she would manage. She had been married to a soldier at a tender age, had two children and was now a widow. Her husband had been sick and had died from complications related to HIV. He was a little over 25years and he was already dead.

This scenario took me back to a time when I worked in a government office, registering births and deaths. Imagine the hurt I felt one day to find myself registering one of my old primary school friends as deceased. She too had succumed to complications related to HIV and Aids. I immediately felt the need to go back into that ward just to look around so that I could understand why the nurses were so hell bent on saying my father was old. Grief does strange things to you...

As I walked into the ward, I realised the sickness that hung over the ward. There was a heavy smell of disinfectants in the ward. As I walked around I began to realise how young my father's wardmates had been, he could have been the oldest person in that ward.

The ward was packed with young men, in their prime ages who should have been out there devouring life in huge chunks but due to illness had been confined to their death beds. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that I knew what was wrong with all these young men, I am hardly a medical professional. But what was certain was that illness was upon our nation, very few of them looked hopeful, very few looked as if they would live to see another day!

 My expedition did not do much to my grief. I just found myself saddened by the calamity which lay before me. So today, 3years after that fateful day, I ask myself, in a society where there is constant scrambling for scarce commodities, including health care and food, who is going to take care of the elderly?? Are we, the younger generation, not going to be cursed for the lack of care that we have shown to our elders under the guise of them being "old anyway"??? Are we not planting seeds which might one day hit us back in the face when we are also old and frail and are yearing for some care??

The elderly are fast becoming a pivotal social backbone in the third world and yet often, their rights are violated and they suffer a lot of unwarranted neglect and ill-treatment. It is my hope that this attitude changes and that we once again accord elderly people the respect and honour that they once had in our society. That we look at them as icons, griots of wisdom and not just a bunch of old hags who are depleting our limited resources!!

Finding space...

All our lives, we worry about what the world thinks of us. We spend half our lives trying to impress other people and trying to get recognition in other people's spaces. We forget that we owe it to ourselves to make a name of ourselves. We forget that we have the power to make something of ourselves, that we do not have to be defined by other people's boundaries, standards and spaces.

The other day, I looked around me and realised that the world had become so busy and most of us ran the risk going through life without ever being heard or ever being able to find their own space where they can just be themselves.

I went to the hair dresser's last week and before then, I had never really thought much about how it was so easy for all of us to loose ourselves in this fast-paced world. I just wanted a simple hairstyle, something I could maintain easily because, I am a mum and take my duties very seriously.

As I sat in that chair, waiting for my hair turn, I began to watch people. In the corner, close to the door, there was a lady getting a nails done. She was asking the manicurist to be a bit faster as she  had an appointment with the woman sitting at the next table, where she wanted to get a new set of eyelashes.

Another lady came into the salon and started telling her stylists about a new cream she had discovered. It was so good and had cleared her complexion in less than a week. Suddenly everyone wanted to know where she had bought it, how much it had cost her. There was talk about how beautiful her skin now looked and everyone wanted to grab a tube. She began telling the other women that the best part about this cream was that you could use it for your whole body and that meant you would have even complexion. There was a lot of joy in the salon as people scribbling the name of the cream in their phones and notebooks.

The million dollar question, which I asked myself was why we had become so vain. The answer for me was loud and clear, to impressed other people and to blend in!!! We all wanted to look good for our partners, or to look better than our friends when we went out as well as to piss off an ex-lover who gilted us and left town but who was visiting town for the week.

All these things we were doing, had absolutely nothing to do with our own needs, if they did, none of the people there said anything about it!!! I looked at myself in the mirror after my hair had been done and I asked myself, why I was doing all this and I realised that I was no different from the rest, it was all about the need to impress someone else, or to just blend in because I was too afraid to be different.

Dear reader, I was going to tell you to get out of the box and try to be yourself more. I was going to tell you the importance of just going against the grain if that would help you define yourself. But then I realised that it was not so easy and that often those who have tried it have been called many names, including "crazy, wierd and strange". Names which I have tried to avoid for most of my life. So friend, today, I will tell you this. I will tell you that in the confusion of today's world, try by all means to find your own space to breadth. Try to take time out and define yourself so that if one day you are asked who you really were, you would not ask for a moment to reflect on that question. Today, I will tell you to love yourself enough to be true to you!!!