This issue was explored with the children themselves and with some
members of the community (interviews with 10 women who were waiting for
small business loans at the local women’s bank).
The children’s perception was that neighbours perceived children from
elderly-headed households to be poorer, dirtier and naughtier than other
children. This is how they described how people saw them.
- Here is a picture of some children who live with their granny. Can
anyone tell that they stay with their granny?
- Sometimes you can tell.
- How?
- You may go to school with that old uniform and people can see this is
a child living with his grandmother.
- Neighbours know but others do too. They can see – they say she
must be living with her granny or she would not be like this.
How is she?
- She has no uniform and she is coughing. She has jiggers (sand fleas)
in her feet because the granny cannot see to take them out.
This correlated quite closely with the perceptions of the 10 women who were
interviewed.
There is a big difference between children living with parents and
children living with grannies. Those living with grannies live in troubles
– no kerosene, no books, no uniforms and some even stop going to
school. They live in trouble because there is no money even for food.
You can see theme because their hair is unshaved, they are dirty
because there is no soap. If there were parents they would look for
soap.
Though these women tended to focus on the behaviour of the children and
the lack of competence of the grannies rather than on their economic
circumstances.
- Children who stay with grandparents have bad habits. Because they
are not moulded by their grannies in the way they would be by parents.
- They have no food so just go around and ask and even think of
stealing and playing games with street kids and copying bad habits.
- Girls have unwanted pregnancies and HIV infections.
They felt that the grandmothers were not able to discipline the children
because they ‘loved them too much’.
Grandparents love the children and so love them and don’t mould them
and punish them and that allows bad habits.
Another strong theme that emerged from the interviews with the women was
that grandmothers were not competent to look after children as they were old.
Old age made people ‘retarded’ - it affected their judgement.
Granny’s brain is retarded she does not think of the future and how to
mould the children. When you get old your level of getting angry
decreases so you cannot discipline children any more.
The older’s brains are not so good.
The obvious disconnect between this view and the picture the children paint of
their lives with their grandparents (see 6. below) suggests that much needs to
be done to reduce discrimination against the elderly and against orphan
children.
6. Relationships with granny
The picture of the relationship between children and their grandparents that
emerged is a complex one with a mixture of care, love, guidance and conflict
at times.
We are comfortable living with granny
One activity (done with 40 of the children) asked them to say how comfortable
they were living with their granny on a scale of 1 to 10 – 10 being most
comfortable and 1 least comfortable. The table below presents the results
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
3
0
1
0
6
1
1
2
8
18
Most of the children were very comfortable living with their grandmother.
Those children who were not comfortable at all (3) had particular home
circumstances that made them uncomfortable, for example a grandmother
who was drinking. There were, however, some children who described things
that made it difficult to live with their grandmothers (see below). All the
children agreed though that they would rather live with their grandmothers
than with an aunt or uncle. There was much discussion about this, with some
of the children obviously speaking from direct experience.
Generally grandmothers were perceived to be people who would care for
them. The following were reasons children gave for wanting to live with their
grandmothers.
I am happy to look after Bibi because she is taking care of me.
Protecting me. When I was still young she used to take care of me and
even now she is cooking for me when I come from school.
- I like to live with my grandmother because she loves me.
- How do you know she loves you?
- Because if I feel like eating fish she buys it for me.