From the diaspora with love for the elderly

Susan covers an elderly lady with a blanket (Photo:Courtesy)

By MURIMI MWANGI

She prides herself on the title of ‘professional beggar for the old people’, and she is unperturbed by the questions and quizzical looks thrown at her for quitting her high life abroad to ‘beg’ in her native county of Nyeri.

As she walks up and down the dusty streets of Nyeri Town, nothing in her simple dressing code or determined walk indicates that she has traversed the globe, and lived and worked in Germany, the Scandinavian countries and South Africa for 15 years.

One’s perception of her would wrongly be that of the typical girl next door, albeit one suffering from a ‘charity seeking syndrome’ — until they learn that her mission is to feed and clothe elderly people.

You see, Joyce Wanjiku Kairu has a big heart for old people, many of whom she says the society has disappointed and neglected.

However, before she made a turnaround to become the elderly people’s caretaker, she, too, was just like many other people — with not time for anyone getting along in years, including people close to her.

Regrettably, it took the death of Joyce’s mother, Purity Wanjiru Kairu, for this highflier to see the light. The feelings of regret and guilt surrounding the loss of someone she had loved dearly, but not given enough attention, motivated Joyce to dedicate the rest of her lie to philanthropy.

Before this life-changing period, the then project manager was working for Lexmark International in South Africa, with Standard Bank as her main client. She was earning big bucks and living it up in the luxurious Rivonia Estate in Johannesburg.

But, caught up in her exciting life, Joyce admits that she pretended to be too busy for her ailing, 64-year-old mother.

“All I thought I could have time to do was make phone calls home and send money for chemotherapy. It did not cross my mind that my mother badly needed my presence during that trying time,” regrets the fourth born of seven siblings.

Mother and daughter last saw each other on Joyce’s 39th birthday, on May 30, 2010. It was a sad reunion as Purity was admitted to hospital at the time. She died three days later, on June 3.

The guilt was too much for Joyce to handle even as she flew back to her adopted home after burying her mother.

The 2010 World Cup, which was held in South Africa, helped her to nearly drown the grief of losing a parent, but the guilt resurfaced as the referee blew the final whistle in the Spain-Netherlands match. There was no escaping her reality.

One day, while Joyce was taking a morning jog around her posh neighbourhood, something tragic happened that completely turned her life around. A fellow jogger, with whom she had occasionally exercised in the early hours of the day, was hit by a speeding vehicle, dying instantly.

“I was in shock; I shut myself in the house and asked myself a million questions. Then I heard a voice tell me that I had not done what I was called to do; assisting the old,” Joyce recounts.

She commenced her charity work in the Soweto slums in South Africa, visiting sickly elderly people and offering them food and clothing. She did this work with the help of her church.

But this was just the beginning of what was to become her new full-time job. The work in Soweto culminated in Joyce’s return to Kenya to continue with her mission among the old people, as an apology to her late mother.

Before flying back, she sold all her assets in South Africa, and committed the money to charity work.

After her arrival, she founded and registered Purity Elderly Care Foundation (named after her mother) to take care of those living their sunset years.

Barely a few months into her labour of love, Wanjiku depleted all her savings amounting to millions of shillings. But her compassion for the old would not let her despair, she moved into the streets, begging for the old!

“Some people thought I was totally mad, while others claimed that I had been fired from my job and deported from South Africa,” Joyce recalls.

Today, she is the voice that speaks for the old people in Nyeri, and has earned herself the name Wanjiku wa Andu Akuru (Wanjiku of the elderly).

She gets all manner of phone calls, and at the most peculiar times, from distressed families seeking assistance for senior citizens.

One particularly unforgettable phone call came from the kin of an 80-year-old granny who had been gang raped in her home. The villains had entered the house by making a hole in one of the mud walls.

“The old woman was in such terrible condition that I was scared she would die,” Joyce remembers.

She took the grandmother to the Nyeri Provincial General Hospital, where she was admitted courtesy of the Gender Based Violence rescue Centre and treated.

“I am happy to report that the elderly woman has since moved in with her grandson in Molo area, and he is taking good care of her,” says a smiling Joyce.

Success stories like this one make the unending work worth every minute.

With the help of volunteers ranging from local university students to community leaders, Joyce cleans up the elderly people’s houses, and sometimes repairs them.

So far, she has been able to construct eleven houses for old people, and estimates that about 300 old people have benefitted from her care.

In July every year, she provides the old people with foodstuffs, blankets and diapers, all this with the help of well-wishers and volunteers.

Joyce, who says she is not afraid to even beg for mobile phone airtime to continue with her cause, appeals to the youth to take care of the old because they, too, will one day be old and in need of the same kind of attention.

“I have dedicated my entire life to the old. Anything else, including getting a spouse, comes secondary to that,” she says with conviction.