Joyce Wanjiku Kairu lived on the fast lane. She earned top dollar as a project manager working in South Africa. Holiday destinations like Australia and America were her playing field. But a personal tragedy changed all this. KIUNDU WAWERU brings her unlikely story.

It was during one of her visits home, in January 2010 that Joyce Wanjiku learnt that her mother was suffering from cancer. After a while, she went back to South Africa and would occasionally send money for her mother’s chemotherapy.

Joyce with some of the elderly people she assists. [Photo: Courtesy]

It was business as usual for Joyce, she now remembers regretfully, saying that she took a sabbatical and travelled first to Australia and then America.

After a while, her mother passed on at the age of 64. Joyce snapped.

"I should have come home and stayed with my mother," says Joyce emotionally. "She had ailed for about ten years and I did not know about it."

Joyce became delusional and would blame herself for her mother’s death.

"I had neglected her," she says.

After six months of living in a ‘crazed’ state, Joyce quit her job with a top South African firm.

Filthy houses

In those six months, Joyce would visit the elderly in South Africa, helping those in need.

She admits that she was consumed with guilt for ‘neglecting’ her mother and the only way to save herself was to reach out to the elderly. With this thought, Joyce took the next flight home.

She researched on the state of the senior citizens and did not like what she learnt one bit. Most elderly people lived alone in filthy houses as they had no one to clean for them. They also lacked food and medical attention.

From Johannesburg where she had lived for 15 years, Joyce landed in her rural home, Nyeri.

She soon registered Purity Elderly Care Foundation (PECF), named after her mother, Purity Wanjiru.

Joyce started working with health workers who already knew elderly people who had been abandoned by their families.

First on the list was Teresa Muthoni, an octogenarian who ailed from ‘a host of illnesses’. Teresa’s case was sad. At the time, she had no family and she lived alone in a mud-walled structure.

She had lain in her bed that was without a mattress for four years and her body was full of bedsores. Someone had drilled a hole at the centre of her bed, in which she would release herself, with the waste going to a basin placed beneath the bed.

"When we went in," recalls Joyce, "we found the ‘toilet’ had not been cleaned for long. Church members, where Teresa worshipped, would bring in food and place it where she could reach for it."

Joyce’s organisation cleaned the house, brought in caregivers, a doctor, and bought her a mattress and bedding. Sadly, Teresa passed on in January, "But in dignity," says Joyce.

Since then, Joyce says she has visited 52 needy, elderly people. With limited resources, PCEF has supported 17 of them.

health workers

Ideally, Joyce, gifted with mobilising skills, gets health workers, corporates, university students and volunteers to visit a particular elderly person. They clean the house and clear it of clutter, repair the beds, which are usually worn out and put clean covers before leaving them with food.

PECF also identifies, recruits and educates caregivers from the community and NGO’s who are charged with taking care of the elderly.

"There are about 100 known cases in Nyeri County alone," says Joyce.

Just last week, another octogenarian was admitted to hospital in Mukurweini for malnutrition. Joseph Gathu lives in a tiny, dilapidated house with his 18-year-old grandson who is in Class Seven. They both sleep on the floor in a room that doubles up as the kitchen and the dining area. Most of the neglected senior citizens have families who can take care of them, though others are poor. Joyce says that the elderly need to live in joy and dignity, which they can only get from close relatives.

"We are trying to empower the communities and families, most of who do not realise that there is need to care for the elderly," says Joyce.

Joyce adds that the best way to care for the aged is in their homes, though she has plans of putting up a home in future.

Lack of transport to the interior is her greatest challenge. She laughs when she says that sometimes food falls off the boda boda motorbikes, that she uses as means of transport. She is, however, glad that several corporates and individuals have come on board with assistance, adding that the local administration and the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation supports the initiative.

But she is quick to say that PECF is not competing with the families or the State in taking care of the elderly.

"We are only complementing their efforts," she maintains.

Despite the challenges, Joyce says she is happy to be here.

"I feel I have reached my peak, I am happy."

This is despite having exhausted her savings. Whenever she is confronted with an urgent need from an elderly person, she seeks help from her friends. And the friends have not disappointed, even those who initially thought Joyce was crazy.

For Joyce, who prefers not to share on her personal life, she has dedicated her life to the grannies.