Grandmothers of the World UNITE for the “Future” of Africa! That’s the slogan I penned for the Solidarity Walk on Sunday August 13th that concluded this truly amazing two day event.

During an unprecedented gathering of African and Canadian grandmothers, women from two totally different worlds met, shared ideas and came to the same conclusion: we all want what is best for our grandchildren so that they may enjoy a bright and secure future.

However, we mean totally different things.

African Grandmothers shared their stories of courage, despair, love, pain and suffering, joys and sorrows.

They are not victims --- these women are heroes to be looked up to and revered. These women bear the weight of an entire continent and do it with humility, grace and love beyond our wildest imagination.

Their needs are simple yet beyond most of their capabilities. Many days they survive on hope and faith alone because our charity starts and stops at home. They need food, shelter, clothing and medicines for their charges. They need to protect themselves and their orphaned grandchildren against illness. They need to educate them so that they can have a chance at a secure future. They need training in the skills required to raise grandchildren who are bereaved, impoverished, confused and extremely vulnerable. They need to know that help will come to the rural communities as well as the urban centers. They need regular incomes and economic independence to alleviate the constant worry of how and if their families will survive.

They deserve hope. Their children, just like ours, deserve a future. They should not have to bury their children or their grandchildren.

I met grandmothers from Uganda, who in their lifetime have been displaced from their native villages and farmed out to a camp that holds 48,000 people. 25% of the households have already taken in orphans and they have no access to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. One grandmother cares for 28 orphans and a paralyzed husband. She looks so frail but I know that she is stronger than I could ever be on my very best day. Sickness and lack of food are their biggest problems. They have no local schools and the nearest hospital is hours away. The camp dispensary does not even have a doctor; the grandmothers must rely solely on herbal medicine to cure all ailments. Trips to the hospital are most often futile. They need a school and a proper hospital within the camp. They need to be able to work for a fair wage. They need to get paid a fair price for their products. They need training to maximize the use of the land at their disposal.

I heard of a grandmother from Swaziland who could no longer bring herself to participate in the Gathering because of the pain when faced with the amount of food available for our snacks and lunches. The Foundation did everything they could to provide only basic nutrition for the grandmothers and the volunteers. But that was still too much for this poor grandmother who could not bring herself to eat anything because she knew that her grandchildren were at home starving. What she must be thinking of us and our cavalier attitude towards the quantity and quality of food available to us. How angry and frustrated she must be to see us with so much and them with so little. How helpless she must feel to not be able to share this cornucopia with her family. I can only hope that by knowing that we are doing everything in our power to bring food to her table that she can forgive us for our insensitivity and apathy of the past. I can only hope that she feels the love that we have for her and her family as they struggle each day to survive. I can only hope that some day she will understand the critical role that she played in raising our awareness of their suffering.

I spoke to a woman from Kenya who left her village to go to university and returned after 15 years. She was so devastated by what she saw that she stayed to help rebuild the village. The cotton industry had vanished and so had most of her generation. Even the bank had abandoned them to their fate. She now works to create a sustainable economy by bringing the grandmothers together and helping them cope with their losses. The men aren’t around. They make sure that they leave the house early and return late in the hopes that the children will already be asleep. She is helping by teaching the grandmothers new skills to generate some income. She is trying to get some social assistance through subsidized shops, group medical coverage including burial services, an ambulance, daycare centers to free up some of their time to make money, alternative care to help the older grannies and poverty alleviation strategies such as a tractor, water pumps for irrigation and a bakery.

Another Kenyan mother sent her three children away 15 years ago when she found out that she was HIV+ because she was sure that she was dying and wanted to protect them. The two boys are currently in the USA and her daughter is here in Canada with her 7 month old grandson. Since they left she has devoted her life to Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya (WOFAK) an organization that she played an important founding role 13 years ago. She has only had access to ARV drugs for the past two years. As Executive Director of WOFAK she was recently informed that an American supporter whose funding was providing ARV drugs to 72 patients has withdrawn their support due to lack of fund raising. She is devastated and has had many sleepless nights since the announcement trying to find a solution. Taking them off of the drugs is not an option that she even wants to think about. Why and how was she ever put in this position? Who can be so irresponsible as to give someone hope one day only to take it away the next? .

Then I heard the South African grandmothers or as they’ve been dubbed “Grandmothers of Steel”. These women have been heard and politicians are listening. They were instrumental in ensuring that the law protecting the rights of elders was giving them what they needed and not what the politicians were willing to give. They are respected and a force to be reckoned with. They are proud and strong. Unlike most seniors they receive a pension of approximately $163 CDN/month. Not much when you consider that a funeral costs over $1,500 CDN. The chasm between the rights of the South African grandmother and the Swaziland grandmother was never made clearer to me than in that one session. On the one hand we have a grandmother who has regained some of the basic human rights that she had always been entitled to and on the other hand I see the grandmother who has to walk for two hours to arrive by 6:30AM so that she can stand in a line for hours to receive her pension of $35 CDN. They often collapse and die while waiting for this minimal and well deserved money. These women do not have the strength and energy to fight for rights that they never knew that they were entitled to. The hurdles to achieve the rights that were given to us at birth are insurmountable on an empty stomach, minimal education and without medication to treat the sick.

Barbara Colorosa, who spoke during our closing plenary, stated that our children are being raised in a society where having, getting and asking for MORE are part of the mantra. Because we always wanted our children and now our grandchildren to have MORE than we did! Why, were we so deprived? Were we so lacking in the basics? Were we in such pain and suffering if we didn’t have all the latest gadgets? We need to be aware of what we are doing to our children. We need to teach them, and what better way than through our actions, that ENOUGH is all they need and that if they are lucky enough to get MORE, they need to learn to share that excess with others who do not have ENOUGH. We need to show our grandchildren that they can be happy, healthy, safe and secure with just ENOUGH. We need to get them involved in this movement to stop this apathy that surrounds us and put an end to HIV/AIDS once and for all.

I left the Gathering emotionally, mentally and physically drained. I also left there more determined than ever to make this problem go away and to be part of the solution. It renewed my faith in the cause and in the Stephen Lewis Foundation. However, small my role I will be able to hold my head before God and say that I did all that I could to help. But mostly I pray that my actions will help and never hinder these wonderful women and suffering children. And may the fruit of my efforts be distributed to the most needy and vulnerable, the grandmothers and orphans of Africa.

Gisele Lalonde Mansfield
August 23, 2006