Grandmothers of Africa

Any visit to Africa reveals the huge loss of life due to HIV/AIDS and the critical role that women, and in particular, grandmothers, are playing in fostering the next generation. Time and again, visits to any part of Wakisi brought us face to face with these remarkable women: determined, insightful and confident and yet often possessing nothing but a impenetrable faith and a responsibility to not only their grandchildren, but the many orphans who no longer have family members alive. And despite what might be termed as a lack of sophistication, these women, while lacking means, are in no way short of resolve – a resolve to do their best for the next generation well after their childbearing and child-rearing days were to be over.

Countless times walking dirt roads and down narrow trails through Wakisi, we would arrive at an uninhabitable structure of mud or sticks to find an elderly woman, the head of the household, sitting on the ground almost incapacitated. Widowed often for decades, they are now responsible for almost countless children – six or more very young children now in their care. These women, despite their circumstances, cannot understand the rationale for the kind of comparatively small families we have in Canada. I was personally admonished and told that we should add another four children to our home!

Back home, it’s easy to overlook the need to look after widows and orphans. In Uganda and across Africa, they are almost omnipresent. God bless them...through us?