Askine Kadison, 39, Kenya
I’m from the rural community so I understand how older people are being treated. The people down there are not being treated well. They are often told, “Go away. You are an old person. You don’t know anything.” Most people treat them so. But within your family older people are loved. Say for example if you have a grandmother, you’ll be happy. If you have a grandfather, you’ll be happy because they are still alive.
If they have no family it’s very sad. When you are a kid with no family, you are taken by a family and stay with them. When you are a girl you get married and you start your own family. When you are a boy you get married and you start your own family.
A typical example from my village concerning older people is an old lady who didn’t have family to care for her so you find people surrounding her to take food to her. And because she was even too old to wash herself, get water and cook for herself people took her food and water.
Again you might find someone old who lives with her son and his wife but they don’t take care of this older person. Maybe you find one or two children who give you food and the other’s don’t care. The others say, “My brother is well off, so let him take care of my mother.”
Personal views: I feel growing older is great, especially in this day of HIV/Aids. Getting to the age of 50 is not very easy. Many die when they are really young, so when I grow older and older I feel really good.
Secrets to aging well: I don’t have special foods and diets. I don’t have the money for that. It is the spirit. When you assume and you feel that your spirit is young your body will also be young. And it goes better when you no longer see someone who you admire and you say, Oh I wish I had that and I wish I had that.” But when you are free from the stress of wanting what you don’t have, you grow young.
Interviewed by Bonnie Fatio, founder of AgeEsteem,during the YWCA World Council in Nairobi, Kenya, July 2007
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Posted by Bonnie Fatio on August 26, 2007 7:55 PM | Permalink
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