The evolution to an urban society is frequently equated with a decline in the status of the family. Families become smaller relatively quickly because of a number of factors, one of which being that the extended family typical of rural settings is much less common in urban areas.

One group of people who are affected by this decline is old people. “In rural areas for example you find that a family leaves the old parents alone to go and stay in cities,” says Emmanuel Sebahutu from the department of family promotion in the ministry of gender and family promotion. “The old person is left alone when they don’t have the strength to work in the fields or do any other kind of work.”

This is not only happening in rural areas, but also in the city where you find old people left to fend for themselves. “Life is not easy in Kigali,” remarks Joyce Umuringa, who works in a home for old people started by the organization Bird of Paradise Ministries. “When a person says they can’t support themselves and the old person, there is no choice left but to go and stay alone.” She said there are also cases where the elderly are put in an annex when they no longer have the strength to cook or do anything else for themselves.

People like this, who have no one to take care of them, don’t have any family or have been abandoned by them are among those found in the home currently based in Kagarama sector, Kicukiro district.

Simon Rwabutogo is a 72-year-old who is staying in the home. He left Rwanda in the 1950 to go and stay in Burundi, married two times there but separated from his wives and didn’t have anyone to live with. “I decided to come back after 1995,” he recalls. “But when I got here I found out that all the members of my family I had left behind were dead.”

Rwabutogo looked for a place to stay, but life was not easy. “I couldn’t get any work because I was old. I had to rely on ironing people’s clothes to get any food; even then I could not afford the rent,” he explains.

Life was really difficult for him as an old person staying alone in the city, and when Rwabutogo heard of the home, he decided to go there. Rwabutogo’s story is just one scenario among the many of those staying in the home that illustrates how hard life can be for old folks who are left to fend for themselves.

“When we decided to start the home, we saw that there was no emphasis on the vulnerable situation of those old people without families or means to survive,” says Tim Kamasa from Bird of Paradise Ministries. “We thought we should do something for them.”

As Kamasa explains, the person in charge of the project, Mary Munyangaju, stays in England from where she endeavors to raise support for the home. “We don’t have many sponsors at the moment, which is limiting the number of people we can help,” he said.

Keeping each other company

There are many more vulnerable old people who require the assistance of the home than it is capable of receiving at the moment – which is only half a dozen. “This is why one of our plans is to expand the home as soon as we can get the land and support needed to build new facilities,” Kamasa says.

For those in the home like Rwabutogo, it has come as an answer to life’s difficulties. “I feel like I have a family for there are others here and we can keep each other company,” Rwabutogo remarks. “I don’t have to worry about where I will be sleeping tomorrow, where to get food. Even my health is taken care of; I have heart problems that would probably have killed me if I was still by myself. Before I couldn’t go to the doctors for checkups as I need to do every week.”

Besides helping the vulnerable, this concept of the elderly living in homes is quite new in the country and this has proven to a challenge to some people. “We have had some who came here but left after a while because they said they could not live with people they don’t know,” Kamasa says.

Traditionally, the elderly were taken care of by their families, direct or extended. With facilities taking care of old people now starting to emerge, there is a worry that it may encourage families to put their elderly parents there instead of taking care of them properly, or just leave them in the homes and never see them again.
“We were actually asked by some people to take their elderly parents and they would be paying us for their maintenance,” Kamasa remarks. “But in our home we don’t receive people who have families that can take care of them; we encourage them to take care of them at their homes surrounded with their families. If they can afford to pay the home, why not pay someone to help take care of the person at home?”

Sebahutu however doesn’t agree that it may be an incentive to abandon the elderly. “I think it can actually make it easier for people to visit them in homes,” he says. “And in any case, there will be criteria as to who should stay there.”