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!!