Old Age Is Never A Crime

Go to the west, come to the east, there is no place like home.

My grandfather would always mention this statement anytime we come back home for the yuletide season. That is the time of the year when our parents usually take us home to know our roots and to familiarise ourselves with the environment of our home town. One thing that is common each time we visited was that there is at least one old person in every household.

Grandpa left this world after he had clocked 105 years of age. My uncle has a palm oil factory in my hometown. They have someone that was employed to look after grandpa. When grandpa left us, we felt the vacuum of the elderly advice and tales by moonlight he always shared with us.

Pixabay

The foregoing story is simply to indicate that our parents who are now older need us around them like never before. Life is in circles. At one time, we were toddlers and now we are mature and have a family of our own where we do all possible to spread love and be loved in return.

There Are No Retirement Homes In Our Culture

As a fervent reader and follower of my blog or column, you would have noticed my respect for African culture. As a typical Igboman, our home is our refuge and we build our lives around it. In the home front, our offsprings are brought up in such a way that each of them work towards defending the frontiers of the family.

Let's mention it here and get it cleared once and for all. Old age is never a crime. All things being equal, everyone will taste old age just like we tasted being a child. The phase of life where someone becomes old indicates how far someone has come.

So, where I come from, when someone retires, he becomes an elder statesman, contributing to the progress of the community through advice and expertise through experience. We don't dump them in one retirement home and make them die before their time.

Hyper-active people who have become old will see it as abandonment and that leads them to death because by nature they ought to be on the move, engaging in one activity or the other.

Campus Production

How do you expect a man who has laboured for close to forty to fifty years and built a house where he or she would retire to and now because of civilization, we will have to take them to a place where there are strangers with diverse nature and whatnot.

Biko

Let's not popularise this European idea into the African family trend. It does not fit it.
I feel that retirement homes are strange to Africans and that we should not imbibe everything we see or hear our white or European brothers do or say.

Would You Like To Be Taken To A Retirement Home When You Grow Old?

For me, I want to be able to go to my children's homes on a visit, one after the other or keep a big poultry as I retire to be productively engaged even though I am not going to apply physical strength supervising the business.
I would not like to be taken to such a place called retirement home. I would love to live with my wife at old age and probably support the community for it to get better than just staying in an enclosure for God knows how long.
I understand that the setup may have a level of advantages but sincerely, home is home and cannot be replaced with any other place.
Some other people may like to stay in such places as there are such arrangements put up by the government and non-governmental organisations for free but still, I want to be a free bird. Neither my old parents or I when I grow old would have propose to be taken to retirement home.