As Africans age, needs rise but support lags

NKULAGIRIRE, Uganda — Uganda is a land of verdant hillsides and fetid trash heaps, of hulking gated estates and crude little shacks, of crowded city markets and countryside chapels. Cherubic babies, swathed tight on their mothers’ backs, turn to eager schoolchildren, who sing songs about someday becoming nurses and lawyers and teachers. Young men and women, in turn, diplomas in hand and little opportunity in sight, end up in dead-end jobs at home, or shipped off to places like Dubai, working in security or construction. For many, to make it to old age here is to toe the line between joy and misery, to wrap oneself in vivid fabric, stand in a radiant sun and dance outside church, singing in gratitude, only to return to a darkened shack, wrinkled and stooped, and go to bed alone and hungry. “Old age is not something to brag about here,” says 75-year-old Tereza Nabunya. “Poverty strikes when you’re old.” Nabunya’s roof leaks. She has no tank to collect water and the nearest well is deep in the bush, about a half-mile away. She is wracked with pain and needs to see a doctor. TWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times