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Living with our Bibi: a qualitative study of children living with grandmothers in the Nshamba area of north western Tanzania.
Authors: Clacherty,G.
Produced by: HelpAge International (2008)
The Kwa Wazee Project works with grandparents and the grandchildren who live with them (generally orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS) in the Kagera district of Tanzania. The main activity of the Project is to provide a cash transfer in the form of a pension to grandparents (mostly grandmothers). Grannies get small monthly pensions for themselves and for the grandchildren they support. This report is the result of a series of participatory workshops with children who are part of the project. It provides an understanding of the issues children are facing and directions for policy and programme intervention. It is clear that children living in elderly-headed households have more stressors in their lives than children living with parents. The findings in this study suggest that the following characterise the issues affecting elderly-headed households:
poverty:
findings suggest that children living in elderly-headed households often do not get enough food and seldom have access to protein
children from elderly-headed households are overworked
even though grandmothers and grandchildren see education as very important, children living with grandmothers do not access education easily because of lack of money. In addition, if they do get to school, their progress is hampered, again largely because of poverty.
grandchildren as caretakers:
another characteristic of the elderly-headed household is that children function as caretakers.
When children have responsibility for the welfare of others they may become "parentified" - that is, they assume responsibilities performed more appropriately by an adult, including providing health and personal care, emotional support, caring for siblings and maintaining the household
an uncertain future:
a further stress that is added to the lives of children living in elderly-headed households is the uncertainty they feel about their immediate futures. They worry about what will happen to them when their grandmothers die. The worry that a child in this situation faces is that he or she will have to move again and will likely have to live with aunts and uncles in a situation they know from experience is worse than their life with their grandmother
also, the children fear (quite realistically) that they will not inherit property when their grandmothers die, leaving them with no means to make a living
a generation gap:
the gap between the grandparent's generation and the children emerges in the conflict between grandmothers and children over time to play and to socialise and rest
Grandmothers expect that they will be looked after but the children know that their ability to do this will be severely hampered because of the missing generation. Parents would have provided the means for further training and income generation and would have taken responsibility for the grandparentsYet, the study shows that children living with their grandmothers feel, on the whole, loved and cared for in spite of the poverty and stress. Perhaps it is this sense of being loved that results in the resilience that is obvious in what the children say about their lives and themselves. They have a strong sense of responsibility towards their grandparents, they feel proud that they can work hard and care for their grannies. They feel they have learned skills that other children don't have and they are clearly goodsurvivors and adaptors.
Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=41817&em=190209&sub=pov
