As part of my role as Secretary of the NGO Committee on Ageing (United Nations, Geneva) I recently had the privilege of meeting with two refugee elders in Kampala. I was most struck by their extraordinary equanimity in the face of tremendous personal suffering; they seem to have “overcome any bitterness” at the pain and indignities they have been, and are still daily, forced to swallow as older refugees. Paradoxically, despite their having been violently uprooted from their homelands, they present as extremely grounded, so dedicated are they to generous service to their fellow elderly refugees.
Their stories, translated from the Swahili and French into English, related the intense violence perpetrated by state and paramilitary groups in their homelands, and their daily struggle to survive in Kampala. Although the refugees who live in camps overseen by UNHCR and the Office of the Prime Minister, receive basic services, including healthcare, those like M.Etienne and Mme.Renilde, who opt to stay in Kampala (about 30% of all refugees in Uganda), have to fend for themselves alongside the local urban poor.
Housing and Healthcare:the two biggest challenges:Elders who are not registered in formal settlements are among the most invisible, and therefore vulnerable and neglected, populations on the planet. Yet both Etienne and Renilde are meeting this challenge to their community by serving as leaders, board members of AREPU (Association of Refugees Elderly Persons Uganda), hosted by the Refugee Law Project, which provides legal, psycho-social, and language support services to refugees and asylum seekers. AREPU members are currently engaged in their own informal registration program, searching out and supporting older urban refugees who might need their help.
M.Etienne is a dignified former elected official and political prisoner in his early sixties who fled the DRC by boat via the Congo River to Benin after being jailed, beaten and tortured for two years. He now lives in a single room with nineteen family members who escaped in his wake. “The first challenge we face as older refugees is finding shelter,” he says. It is not our culture for me, as an elderly person to stay with my wife in one corner of a room, which we share with children and grandchildren. It is very embarrassing for a parent to sleep in the same room as his children. It is also embarrassing to the children.”
Mme Renilde, an elderly lady from Burundi who was raped and beaten almost to death by paramilitary forces intent on seizing and looting her family farm, added “when you visit the refugees, there is nowhere to place your foot.”
They tell the story of a friend in her seventies who lived in an unventilated room with nine other people, and literally suffocated to death last month from bronchitis. She had traipsed from hospital to hospital for over a month, looking for medicine, but found none, even at Mulago, the public hospital, where she was told there was no medicine. Since healthcare providers and older refugees rarely speak each others’ languages, elders are often misdiagnosed, and prescribed inappropriate medicines, if there are any medicines to be found.
Faith Communities Step into the BreachKampala’s faith communities (Christian and Moslem) fill the social and spiritual gap left by lack of government support to urban refugees. Many church members shelter refugees in their homes once they reach Uganda, and provide space for them to congregate, worship, and socialise when settled. M.Etienne, who arrived in Uganda when he was 61 “already an elderly person,” he says, injured and traumatised, was received into the home of a Congolese pastor in exile who took care of him for two months.
When Mme Renilde was finally well enough to travel after months in the ICU, she was driven to Uganda and sheltered by the driver’s sister until she found a room. A Congolese congregation helped her apply for refugee status and connected her with the Refugee Law Project where she took English classes. She uses her new skill to interpret for other refugees and support them in their search for the lowest cost housing and services.
Dancing and table fellowshipMme. Renilde is an active member of a Burundian women’s group that meets to practice traditional dancing. She and M. Etienne recognise the elders’ role as curators of their cultures, since there are “many things the children are forgetting…It is our responsibility to teach our children their history, how we lived in our country a long time ago, the food we used to eat, and which we should continue eating here.”
On June 20th, World Refugee Day, AREPU organised the community in exile to bring their national dishes for a day of feasting and celebration, an occasion for everyone to sample one another’s foods and join in their dances. As part of his contribution to the work of cultural memory, M.Etienne is writing a book on the sombe, the Congolese national dish made from cassava leaves.
Funeral rites and the problem of where to bury the dead, are particularly challenging issues for elders and families in exile, since the body of the deceased cannot, as tradition requires, be returned to the village of origin, given both the state of insecurity in countries of origin and significant expense of transportation. In the case of the lady who literally suffocated from bronchitis in the overcrowded room, Inter-Aid Uganda gave the community the funds for an ambulance to transport the body to a public cemetery. Asked how the burial rites they conduct in Kampala are different from those traditionally observed in the DRC, M.Etienne replied that “all the relatives from all over would come. Now it is only the immediate family that is here.” There was a great loneliness in that observation, in the refugee communities’ inability to observe the traditional funerals that benefit both the bereaved and the spirit of the deceased.
When we said goodbye, I told them I wished I could bring them to Geneva to speak at the Human Rights Council in person, but failing that possibility, I would bring their words to an upcoming panel on Older Refugees. They had a hard time believing anyone else would be interested in them— indeed I was the first person to request an interview— because “no one ever notices the elderly — they ignore us.”
All our societies could benefit from actively including the experience, wisdom, and generosity of older persons such as M.Etienne and Mme Renilde. Societies that attend to the needs of the elders and invite them to participate fully in public life, are measurably more resilient. In the absence of sustained government support, the marginalised older urban refugees in Kampala are seizing the initiative to create their own social and spiritual spaces for community sharing, worship, and mutual aid. They do need help though, which can be provided through transnational humanitarian and faith networks. For instance, Mme Renilde mentioned that she needs glasses for distance vision, and that all the elders need healthcare and minimally decent accommodation.
My wide ranging conversation with M Etienne and Mme Renilde left me exhilarated and enriched, hopeful for humanity knowing that such people work so effectively, invisibly, and anonymously in our midst. What Tertullian said about Christians in the 2nd century, “see how they love one another,” applies to the urban refugee elders like Etienne and Renilde in the 21st century. It is a rare privilege to be in the orbit of such love.
For more information on AREPU and how to contribute to their cooperative savings account at Barclay’s Bank in Kampala, contact the author, or The Refugee Law Project.