By MARION NDUNG’U

For 15 years, Trizah Muthoni lived in a small house in Mweiga Township in Nyeri County. She had been forced out of her ancestral Kirinyaga home because she could to bear children.

In Mweiga her predicament only got worse. She was bedridden for many years and because of poor care, she developed serious bedsores.

In her weakness, she lacked the strength to turn herself and there was no one to help her achieve this important feat. With time, she helplessly watched maggots make her body their home.

Someone placed a bucket under her bed and made a small hole in the bed to allow her to answer nature’s call. Neighbours occasionally emptied the ‘toilet’, but Muthoni was generally left alone and lonely.

Then Joyce Wanjiku, the founder and executive director of Purity Elderly Care Foundation, got to Muthoni just 16 days before she died. Wanjiku is happy she got there at that time for she at least made it possible for Muthoni to die in dignity.

On Muthoni’s burial, Wanjiku was horrified to find out her children came for the ceremony. Where were they when she needed them most? wondered Wanjiku.

ABODE IS PARADISE
“Elderly people live in deplorable conditions after their children abandon them in old age. These people live next to neighbours, churches and even the administration but nobody cares about them,” said Wanjiku.

It is a matter of concern that old age – and we will all become old if road accidents and other ailments don’t claim us earlier – is seen as a curse by young people. It is common for old people to be insulted, raped, and even labelled witches. Some people see them as a nuisance and are killed over flimsy excuses.

In Nyeri County, many aged people are shunned and neglected. They live in deplorable states, while their children are doing well wherever they have settled. On the other end of the town is Miriam Njeri’s house.
She has only been living here for three weeks and says if there is paradise, then her new abode is it.

She has every reason to consider her new dwelling a haven. Njeri, 80, was living in a deplorable dwelling.
Although lonely, now she has a warm abode and two sheep to take care of. Outside her new mabati house is a pile of manure. Njeri tells us that this was removed from inside her house. From the size of the pile she literally lived in a dumpsite.

FOUGHT FOR SPACE
In her old abode, Njeri literally slept with the sheep. They would jump over her sleeping space as they fought for the little sleeping space available.

The Standard team found Njeri feeding her four sheep with leaves she has just collected from the river. She is now a happy woman. She even sings a song in praise of her home as she weaves a kiondo.

“My house was leaking and one day Wanjiku came and told me she would help me. I didn’t give her offer much thought, but one day she came and brought my rickety house down and gave me a new home,” says a jovial Njeri.

Njeri, 88, weaves kiondos and ropes, which she sells to get money for upkeep. Sometimes, she does manual labour to feed herself. Now a small pen has been built next to her house and for the first time, she can actually have her own sleeping space. When we ask her about her family she says she has children and grandchildren but has not seen any of them for years.

When Wanjiku sees this kind of happiness in old people, she is motivated to do more – to give dignity to the many old people who are treated as outcasts even by their own families.

She says that 90 per cent of the neglected old people have families and advises children to make an effort to see their children –  it is not enough to send money to them but visit them and show compassion, she says.

COMMITTING SUICIDE
Wanjiku started the organisation because of a personal experience. While she was working abroad, her mother developed colon cancer and she did not know of it until a few months to her death.

Even though she was with her mother before she died she wished she could have done more, and been there more for he.

“I went back to work after the burial but I could not concentrate. I was so guilty so I quit my job and came home to start the foundation in honour of my late mother,” said Wanjiku.

Wanjiku faults the working class for abandoning their old parents saying that these make up the larger per cent of abandoned people.

Wanjiru says many people are busy with their lives in urban centres forgetting their parents in the village.

FRIEND OF THE OLD
Wanjiku says that out of ten elderly people she deals with, three are men. She had heard many cases of old men committing suicide after being abandoned.  Now she says she knows why.

Affectionally called Wanjiku wa andu akuru (Wanjiku friend of the old) she says that she will not stop until she sees the elderly taken care of. She largely operates in Kieni East, but has her eyes set on expanding to the whole country. She plans to build a home for the elderly in the area.

“I am preparing society to take care of me in old age,” says Wanjiku.

The organisation works with students from Kimathi University and touts in Mweiga Township to clean up and even rebuild homes for the aged.

Wanjiku says that one day we will all grow old and our actions towards the old while we are able will impact heavily on how we will be treated in old age.