God Bless the Grandmas

Eight of them. In November 2004, Charles Bameka introduced me to this Ugandan widowed grandma who was struggling to care for eight orphaned grandchildren.  Her children and their spouses had all succumbed to the AIDS pandemic. “If I hadn’t taken them in,” she flatly states, “the children would have died.” She sighs: “But I’m too old to take care of the children of my dead children.”

She sure tries. 

The only clothes the kids have are the clothes on their backs. They all sleep on reed mats placed on the earthen floor. At “bedtime,” the kids remove their tattered shorts and shirts (they have no underwear). Grandma washes them and places them to dry on the thatched roof of their hut. In addition to odd pieces of cloth used as blankets, she places her one ceremonial dress over the smallest.

Like an army of aging angels, countless Ugandan grandmothers did their best to protect their orphaned grandchildren. For sure, the kids would have perished without their grandmas. Somehow, through assigning all kinds of chores, tending a meager garden, carefully portioning out the posho (cornmeal porridge) and going hungry themselves, the grandmas made it work. They saved the children.

Nowadays, the Ugandan grandmas are facing a second pandemic, Covid-19.

Pastor Bameka, who now serves as presiding bishop of the Lutheran Church-Uganda, reports that, with frequent lockdowns, hunger has been added to the lethal pandemic mix. When lockdowns occur, poor people can’t get out to look for work to buy a little food. Which means everybody in the family, including grandma, eats very little, if at all. Some fear that hunger will take more African lives than the coronavirus.

Pandemic pondering: If you sent us a small gift, tagged “Meal Money for Grandma,” we’d make sure that these vulnerable heroines would quickly receive assistance. And if you happen to hear a chorus of giggles floating in from the southeast, it’s the Ugandan grandmas delightedly preparing food for their loved ones.