For well over four decades HIV and AIDS has devastated the African continent tearing away at the social fabric and altering the supports holding communities together. Of the 37 million people living with AIDS in our world, about 70% live in sub-Saharan Africa. As governments tackle the crippling effects of the AIDS pandemic, family structures are dramatically altered. In many African communities the middle generation is no longer alive and some 15 million children have been orphaned in subSaharan Africa alone.
Stricken with their own grief after burying their children, the magnanimous grandmothers -“gogos”- take on the care of grandchildren as well as other vulnerable children within the community. Pressed into parenting again, these elderly heads of households scrape together money for funerals, school fees, food, and medicine.
Often widowed and alone, these elders assume the care of 5 to 7 children. They embrace their duties with much love and courage but with very few resources. The challenges they face are incomprehensible. Some of their children are HIV positive so health care is a real priority! During our discussions on our May, 2019, visit with grandmothers, they reveal that they worry a great deal about sustainability – having enough food to feed their families. Another major concern in the orphan-grandmother equation is providing schooling. The African “gogos” know that hope for the future rests with education. They are desperate to find enough money to pay for school fees, uniforms, shoes, and books.
Formed in 2008, the Granny Connection in Columbus, IN. is a group of local grandmothers and “grand-others” who stand in exquisite mutuality and solidarity with our African sisters. During our recent visit, we were moved by the stories of these tenacious women! We take action not only because we believe in service and civic duty, but because we see something fundamentally wrong when millions of grandmothers and children are living in poverty and dying of preventable and treatable diseases. So we act as ambassadors raising the volume of the grandmother’s stories until they are heard and acted upon. Our work is two-fold really: to re-awaken our community about the HIV and AIDS health crisis that persists in our own country and state AND to assist the families in one area of Zambia, near the capital of Lusaka, an area called Matero. The Power of Love Foundation (POL) with whom we visited does a marvelous job taking care of children in the community offering health supervision, food and soy products for the malnourished, medications, schooling money, and other special needs for 400 families in the program. Because families are often large, we saw many children whose weight was stable but who remained hungry. We helped to provide social and behavioral histories, participated in home visitation with staff, handed out a large number of treated malaria nets to the whole community, and involved ourselves in the Saturday Safe Parks Day which was the highlight for me. On this day, children in the community gather for games and guided education according to age levels.
In addition to thoroughly enjoying the children, we visited another part of the program, the Micro- loan Program. There are nearly 400 women in various parts of this 3 cycle program, managed well by staff members who live in the area and who assist with small loans to women to start businesses such as beauty shops, small stores and restaurants as well the sales of clothing and foodstuffs in the area thus negating the need to bus into a larger community for shopping. A new happening I noticed was that there are now small bank stands all over the larger community of Matero so the women are starting bank accounts with the money they earn. Self -empowerment of adults and children is the main goal of the Power of Love Foundation and they are doing a remarkable job! It is a real pleasure to work here in the United States in solidarity with such a program and the families involved. HIV and AIDS and its devastating effects physically, emotionally, and economically present huge hurdles for families, but the lovely spirit in which staff and POL participants are managing the challenges is both motivating and inspiring!
Ann Jones , African visitor of the POL Foundation for Granny Connection