AIDS leaves Africa's grannies to raise children

AIDS leaves Africa's grannies to raise children
Kenyan woman Kanotu Mumo (L) speaks during an interview with Reuters at Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya, Nov. 8, 2007. (Antony Njuguna/Reuters)NAIROBI (Reuters) - Skinny and gap-toothed, her nosesmudged with black dust, grandmother Kanotu Mumo sorts charcoalinto small pots for sale on the stoop of her slum hut.
Mumo is an "AIDS granny" in Kibera, one of Africa's biggestslums. Like grandmothers all over Africa, they have been leftto fend for orphans after their own children and husbands died.
Her hut, stacked with sacks of charcoal, measures 10 by 8feet and is too dark to see more than a few inches (cm) even inthe middle of the day.
Somehow she shelters four grandchildren, two greatgrandchildren and the child of a dead relative, who sleep onmattresses and two beds. There is no toilet or running water.
According to U.N. figures, at least 12 million children inAfrica have lost one or both parents because of AIDS. This is80 percent of all AIDS orphans in the developing world.
The number of orphans in Africa has increased by 50 percentsince 1990 while falling in other regions. The United Nationssays there will be 53 million by 2010, some 30 percent of thembereaved by AIDS.
The burden of this disaster is borne by extended families,most often grandmothers, who might have otherwise dreamed ofreturning to their home villages for retirement at the end of atough life.
Kanotu Mumo moved to Kibera, home to 800,000 people, whenher husband died about 25 years ago in eastern Kenya. "I can'tremember. It has been so long. When my husband died therelatives threw me out and sold the land."
Unlike many of the grandmothers, doleful and worn down bytheir fate, Mumo smiles and jokes. She says she cannot rememberher age. As she talks, two teenage granddaughters come and go.
Her story is typical of the everyday tragedies of Kibera.Two daughters and a son died of AIDS. Another son was stoned todeath by a mob after he was caught stealing. "I am embarrassedto talk about it but it was due to the unemployment."
She lives close to the railway line that runs through thesprawling slum, acting both as a pedestrian thoroughfare andplace for traders to lay out shoes and clothes.
She sells her charcoal -- the slum's primary fuel -- for afew shillings profit, after buying from a nearby wholesaler whocarries it to her hut.
SCHOOL
Like other grandmothers interviewed by Reuters, Kanotu Mumocomes to the Stara school in Kibera to clean twice a week.Their grandchildren attend the school and are fed from hugevats of steaming maize porridge and beans.
The project, supplied and funded by Dutch charityChildsLife International, the U.N. World Food Programme andKenyan aid agency Feed the Children, was started seven yearsago by a group of Kibera mothers, after friends died and leftthem to look after their children.
The school on the edge of Kibera houses more than 500lively children, 70 percent of them orphans, dressed in greenuniforms.
More than 30 of the children are HIV positive and receiveanti-retrovirals from a nearby clinic in the slum, suppliedagainst vouchers from the school.
The small size of the premises means classes are noisy andovercrowded, with up to 80 children of mixed ages. The school,headed by dynamic Kibera resident Josephine Mumo, has provenskilful in raising support.Singer Harry Belafonte, Barbara Bush, mother of PresidentGeorge W. Bush, and actress Drew Barrymore have been backers.Without their grandmothers and projects such as Stara, manymore orphans in Kibera and elsewhere would end up asglue-sniffing street children or child prostitutes.Josephine Mumo says that when the mothers started theschool, they brought in children who had been raped as theywent door-to-door begging for food.SURVIVE FOR THE CHILDRENMany of the grandmothers are themselves weakened by HIV aswell as old age, making it even harder for them to feed theircharges.Peris Owuor, 50, is a Kibera grandmother looking afterseven grandchildren. "Sometimes my body does not feel good andI cannot go to look for food," she said.Owuor, whose husband died of AIDS in 1998, washes clothesto make money, at 150 Kenya shillings ($2.25) a day, and triesto help feed her three surviving children who have no jobs."But when my body is not good I just have to stay at home."Another grandmother, Antonina Mujenge, also HIV positive,cares for five of her own children and four grandchildren. Shealso sells charcoal."I try to look after them like other children but it isvery difficult because of my low income. Sometimes there is notenough for all of them," she said."My main aim is to stay around long enough to make sure thekids can get an education and find jobs," said Mujenge, who haslived in Kibera for 20 years.She would love to return to her village in western Kenya."But I am an outcast at home. They say I can infect others. Icannot go back."Grace Atema, 65, looks after three grandchildren and herdaughter, mother of two of them. She washes clothes twice aweek to raise money."I put everything I get towards the children. But I worrywhat would happen if I died. How would they survive?" she said.(Editing by Sara Ledwith)