THIS DIGITAL GENERATION
It’s no longer possible for the elderly to tell folk tales to their grandchildren. Nowadays grandchildren hardly ever visit upcountry because grandma and grandpa are now tucked in some place dubbed ‘the home for the old’
Slowly as you sit under a shade of tree watching a colleague wrestle glasses unto their face some distance away the memories come crashing in. That rainy morning when the bundle of joy was finally, brought home.
How everybody crowded to just have a look at the little someone hidden somewhere between the shawls or just hold the baby even if for a short while. Having waited for this important little person for nine good months and marveling at the sweet baby scent emaciating from the shawls. During the first weeks there were only anxious guesses on the sex of the child. Everyone wishing inwardly let it be a boy/girl according to their preferences.
Soon the little chap is walking and calling mama. Then he stands at the door and waves you goodbye on his way to school. Again he comes home in the evening smelling of sweat from playing football with the boys and gobbles down food fit for a crowd without washing his hands.
You see him through school and finally you hire buses to carry villagers to his prime graduation party that cost you an arm and a leg. Now he is working and has even earned himself the title ‘boss’ and drives one of those sleek car in town and lives in a posh neighbourhood while dining in five-star hotels.
Somewhere along his way up the social path he drove in the compound and stuffed you in a vehicle and drove you to your new home having sold that piece of inherited land where now stands a big factory that now drains its wastes in the once crystal clear stream down the valley.
Shaking your head sadly, you wonder what happened to your sweet little daughter and son who would run into your arms whenever you came home from work. You miss the days you had nothing much but had each other’s company.
Now you hear of the said grandchildren you've never met. They are now all grown-up men and women with homes of their own. Another generation at the risk of starting the same calamity again. You can’t help but wonder where the world twisted.
Children are too busy to attend to their own blood parents, busy working tight-schedules in towns, chasing after careers abroad and hence prefer checking them into homes for the old and only visit once in a blue moon when they remember if ever. If this is not neglect then I don’t know what is. They would rather pour loads of cash into these homes for upkeep and maintenance of their aging parents than being caught dead doing the caring themselves.
This happens most to parents whose one spouse is deceased. A stage in life, that my lecturer would call ‘the empty nest’ stage of life. This is whereby one of the spouses dies having raised the children to maturity.
Meanwhile if you are lucky to have escaped the home for the old, you have that poor neighbour who pities you from time to time and perhaps fetches water for you and feeds you whenever they remember which is not frequent enough. Your spouse’s grave is unkempt and overgrown with weeds and perhaps you are suffering from jiggers too!
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