Sharon Kechula and her grandmother Lucy Akinyi Oundo during the interview. Photo/Anthony Kamau
In some countries, Kenya included, between 40 and 60 per cent of orphans live in grandmother-headed households. These courageous and resilient women have no time to grieve.
Their priority is the next generation: the infants, toddlers, and teenagers who are left behind. While there is never enough for their burgeoning households, somehow these grandmothers manage to feed, clothe and comfort their grandchildren.
They become parents… for the second time. Such is Lucy Akinyi Oundo, a 66-year-old retired teacher and grandmother to Sharon Kechula, 20 and Alvin Othieno, 23.
Playing the role of a grandmother and a mother simultaneously is not an easy affair.
“Accepting to move on with my two grandchildren after my daughter passed on in 2001 was challenging. I was mourning as a mother and in the same breath, grieving for my orphaned grandchildren,” she says.
Lucy confesses that she felt the need to act as though life could still be all rosy for the children; just the way it had always been, yet, “at the bottom of my heart was a hole that had ripped open with every memory of my daughter.”
She had just retired as a teacher and life had become somewhat hard for her as money had become so elusive. She speaks well of her husband, who stood by her side as their five children worked hard to support the grandchildren, who were in Standard Eight and Five then.
Lucy soon moved the children from their home in Dandora to live with her, and that move, she says, was the beginning of the healing process.
But she had questions lingering in her mind: “I had been a committed Christian all along but it was at this time that my faith was tested to extremes as I asked God again and again, ‘Why me?’”
Soon, Lucy realised that she needed to move on with life and she found strength from the scriptures she had firmly believed in as a catechist.
“As you would imagine, there are challenges that come with this new job description. The generation gap is just but one of them”
Lucy shares, “but I have learnt and understood them through communication. Being a teacher has also helped, though I have had to make every effort to keep abreast with what is current so that I do not enforce some old ideals to them.”
As a mother, Lucy admits that she was very strict on her own children, but has since seen the need to relax. She even watches television with her grandchildren, taking in what they consider to be entertainment.
“And I have found that this helps me find some level of balance,” she says. But she insists that while she is a lot nicer to her grandchildren, she is not fully agreeable with today’s permissive culture.
“There is still some mode of dressing that I cannot allow to be worn in church or even in public,” Lucy reveals one of her non-negotiable house rules.
So far, she’s pulled the strings as much as she could to make her grandchildren comfortable, just like other teenagers with mothers are.
“I have been a member of four chamas in my neighbourhood and this has helped me a lot. The money comes just in time to chip in for fees.”
Lucy’s grandchildren are now in college and she feels frustrated in all her attempts to access bursaries.
“At times, it has been very painful when I see such finances going to the undeserving, yet I cannot do anything about it because I do not know ‘so and so’.” But she has since learnt to take one step at a time and live for today.
Walked out
On the flipside, 29-year-old Orchid Johnstone Waka knows what it feels to be abandoned by his own mother. It’s been more than two decades since she walked out on them, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother.
Before she left, life was pretty normal for Orchid and his two siblings at their home in Kawangware. He was only five then, and could not comprehend what had happened until his father escorted them to their grandmother’s house and left them there.
But his grandmother was straining her shoestring budget, vegetable vendor budget. It was soon clear that she could not manage the children’s upkeep in the city and a trip was planned for upcountry where she would switch to farming.
“She made sure that I never lacked anything and she would at times go extra lengths and pay for my school trip or camping when she could have bought herself a nice dress,” says a nostalgic Orchid, who confessed that he was a handful growing up.
“At times I would become a nuisance in school only for her to keep on pleading with the head-teacher that she would discipline me and I should not be expelled.”
By the time his father passed away, he had introduced him to six different stepmothers.
“I never got to have a relationship with any of them since I had gradually warmed up to my grandmother even though I have been trying to trace my mother.”
Orchid’s grandmother was laid to rest in 2003. For 17 years, she had been a mother to her four grandchildren, including the stepbrother Orchid’s father later introduced them to.
“I suddenly felt lonely, confused and weak. She had become my source of strength and support but I realise that I must pay tribute to her for struggling to bring us up, seeing to it that we had a family and a home,” he says.
Lucy and Orchid’s grandmother are some of the women who have emerged as the ‘unsung heroes’ of Africa’s children.
They bury their own children and, while in their 50s, 60s and 70s, begin to parent again, raising their grandchildren with little or no support.
Source: Daily Nation
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