Will it be home or ‘nyumba ya wazee’ for me?

Prof Austin Bukenya when he visited Nation Centre, Nairobi, on April 5, 2015. He will be turning 72 on Wednesday, February 10. PHOTO | BILLY MUTAI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • As I enjoy the effusion of affection from my nearest and dearest, I cannot help wondering where and how I should while away my advanced years, when, like all of us, I become increasingly dependent on others for my existence.

  • Should I spend them here at home among my relatives, or should I consider the possible alternative of relocating to an old people’s home, “nyumba ya wazee”?

I will be turning 72 on Wednesday, February 10. Now, that is a ripe old age, and I had wanted to have a big birthday bash, preferably in Nairobi, with all my relatives, colleagues, friends and former students, as I did in Kampala when I turned 70. 

But, as it happens, Mother Church has decreed that that date will be Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian 40-day Lenten fasting period. Since I am a subscriber thereunto, I have no option but to observe a quiet sobriety on the day.

Be that as it may, hitting these high age figures inevitably obliges one not only to look back at where one has come from but also forward to what might be in store for one. This strikes me particularly poignantly now since I am convalescing from a minor ailment in Kampala, and I am enveloped in the loving care of my family.

As I enjoy the effusion of affection from my nearest and dearest, I cannot help wondering where and how I should while away my advanced years, when, like all of us, I become increasingly dependent on others for my existence.

Should I spend them here at home among my relatives, or should I consider the possible alternative of relocating to an old people’s home, “nyumba ya wazee”?

Old people’s or senior citizens’ homes have been a feature, especially, of urban areas for many centuries. In Nairobi, probably the best known Nyumba ya Wazee is the one in the Kasarani-Roysambu area, where the ‘saintly’ Maurice Michael Cardinal Otunga

spent his final years in the company of his fellow elders, most of them the poorest of the poor.

Another ‘Nairobi’ old people’s home has been fictionally immortalised in the novel The Present Moment by our recently-lost sister, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. Her story in the novel, which was republished some years ago by the Feminist Press in New York,

is woven around the reflections and recollections of a handful of characters in a senior citizens’ home. 

In Kampala, the iconic old people’s home is the rather sadly-named Bakateyamba (totally helpless ones), which Pope Francis singled out for an official visit on his recent African pilgrimage. So the totally helpless also “ate the rounds” or “had the swagger”

(their day out in the sun), as they say here.

INESCEPABLY NEGATIVE IMAGE

But that concept of helplessness assigns an inescapably negative image to old people’s homes. In Africa, mention of the institutions evokes images of total destitution, people abandoned by their relatives and forced to depend entirely on charity. Even in more

affluent societies, younger relatives who choose to send their aging parents there are often suspected of selfishness and callousness.

In Africa, mention of going to an old people’s home, or sending a relative there, is almost taboo. It is taken as a rejection of your family if you consider going there, or a rejection by your family if they hint at the possibility of sending you there. 

Attitudes should, however, not be so absolute, and there may be definite advantages to geriatric communal living, which old people’s homes are.

It is a fact that people are living longer and longer, and as they do, their physical, social and psychological special needs increase. Much as our families might want to keep us with them, their ability to look after us are decidedly limited.

Attending to the hygiene requirements of the elderly, for example, like bathing and toilet visits, can be quite challenging. Getting a mzee on and off a pit latrine facility, which is all most of us have at home, is a major operation.

Feeding them appropriately, too, is no easy matter. That is even before we get to the inevitable intensive health care our bodies demand as we age.

Socially, too, we cannot assume that surrounding them with their chattering and hyperactive grandchildren and great grandchildren, with their smartphones and other dot.com gadgets, is necessarily a source of comfort.

A mzee often needs quiet moments of restful reflection and, if possible, sharing recollections with agemates. There may be a few of them in the village or in the mtaa, but walking out to meet them becomes increasingly difficult. You can be lonely in a crowd,

they say.

Those of us who have lived most of our lives in fairly regulated frameworks are invariably irritated by the laxity and laissez-faire attitudes of home environments. Reciprocally, our relatives are irritated by our impatience with them.

Why should you interrupt a sweet fraternal conversation just because you have to keep an appointment, or to beat a deadline for that crucial chapter of your autobiography?

Regarding psychology, our minds inevitably slow down as we grow old and we begin to suffer from problems like lapses of memory, dementia, and even the dreaded full-blown Alzheimer’s.

These and other conditions, like bouts of depression, would be difficult for an ordinary member of an old person’s family to understand or to manage.

The long and short of it is that old people would undoubtedly benefit from an organised environment managed by professionals, trained in the systematic handling of elderly people. I believe such people are called geriatrists. They specialise in giving physical,

social and medical attention to the aged.

But their services are neither cheap nor readily available, even in fairly well-to-do surroundings. Getting geriatrists to provide individual home care to our aged relatives, for example, is out of the reach of most East African families.

So, it might make good sense to have customised environments where our beloved aged can be given specialised care. Our love for them should not subject them to our untrained trial-and-error care that is the best that we can provide in our homes.

It does not, however, have to be either home or nyumba ya wazee. A thoughtful and systematic blend of the two might be the best idea. We should, for example, be considering community or even family old people’s homes, where the elderly can stay in the

proximity of their families while at the same time enjoying the facilities specially designed for them.

I think I should seek a few weeks’ residence at Nyumba ya Wazee for some firsthand experience.