She is widowed and senile. At 95, Ms Bena Nakazi lives in complete uncertainty about what tomorrow may bring. Impoverished is what best describes the helpless old lady's life.

But regardless of the suffering that she has gone through, Ms Nakazi has had to persist. She doesn't live in total despair, as she has had to live each day the way it comes to avoid stressing herself every now and then.

And although some days might bring with them lots of gloom, the old lady says she is not about to give up. "I have always tried to find a way around my troubles," she says.

What constitutes the biggest part of the old lady's life is the dilemma of what to eat each day that sets in. And the moment she's able to find food, she considers her day a success. When Daily Monitor visited her, she was preparing a simple dish for lunch at her home down in the remote village of Kasanga, Ssi Sub-County in Mukono District.

Perched on a piece of Hessian square at the entrance of her back door, Ms Nakazi cheerfully peels the only cassava root that her small garden has luckily made available.

It is this single cassava root that ought to see her through this day and the day after, before she starts looking for food elsewhere. On her left are two cups, from which she sips what she would like to call tea.

But in actual sense, it's mere hot water with neither a beverage, nor sugar mixed in it.

"Hot water isn't good for humankind. But we have nothing to do to warm our bodies like on this cold morning," she says, "So we tend to fool our stomachs with hot water that what we are pouring in is tea."

Ms Nakazi says she has children but they do not help her. She says, instead they go to her home to get the food she grows.

Ms Nakazi is a reflection of the lives of hundreds of thousands of elderly people in Uganda. They are facing challenges at the time when they are powerless to make any meaningful change.

The 2002 National Census puts their number at 1.5 million. Although the figure is quite small in comparison to the other age sets, they are the most affected people in the country.

Recently the State Minister for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities, Mr Suliaman Madada, revealed that the government would start paying a monthly allowance to the elderly. The inactive poor old people would get Shs18,000, plus Shs10,000 if they are looking after disadvantaged children.

Donors will fund the pilot project, which will start this financial year in six districts.

Surprisingly, there is no policy to protect the elderly. Most of them die in the most inhumane way due to lack of health care and basic necessities.

Ms Deborah Kaijuka, the Executive Director of Uganda Reach the Aged Association, says the problem of the elderly suffering originates from the fading traditional social support system.

"People no longer live in homesteads or extended families where young adults supported their elderly parents. Instead many young adults prefer living in nucleated families," Ms Kaijuka says.

A homestead was like a chain of three segments where the active young adults were in the middle supporting both their parents and their own children.

Ms Kaijuka explains that the system has changed and now the young adults have moved to urban centres seeking better life and jobs, leaving the elderly people in the rural areas.

HIV/Aids

Sister Monica of the Good Samaritans, an NGO supporting and managing Bakateyamba Home for the Elderly at Nalukolongo in Kampala, says the new challenge facing the aged is HIV/Aids. "Many elderly people who would have retired from work are now shouldering the burdens of orphans of their children who died of Aids," Sister Monica says.

Ms Kaijuka concurs with Sister Monica. "Aids has eliminated the active middle age group thus breaking the link of support," she says. "Even some older people are infected with HIV/Aids since the time the disease broke out, many were still in the 40s and were sexually active." Ms Kaijuka says without a policy, it becomes very difficult to mobilise funds from donors yet the donors don't consider the elderly when giving grants.

She says the resources they get for the elderly are just 'a drop in the ocean'.
According to a draft of the National Policy on Older Persons, there will be an institutional framework in both the central and local government funding of national projects aimed at helping the elderly people. Unless a policy on the elderly is drawn, older people like Ms Nakazi will live and die in poverty.

More Information on World Elder Rights Issues