By Barry Moody
Tue Nov 27, 7:19 PM ET NAIROBI (Reuters) -
Skinny and gap-toothed, her nose
smudged with black dust, grandmother Kanotu Mumo sorts charcoal
into small pots for sale on the stoop of her slum hut.
"AIDS granny" in Kibera, one of Africa's biggest
slums. Like grandmothers all over Africa, they have been left
to fend for orphans after their own children and husbands died.
Her hut, stacked with sacks of charcoal, measures 10 by 8
feet and is too dark to see more than a few inches (cm) even in
the middle of the day.
Somehow she shelters four grandchildren, two great
grandchildren and the child of a dead relative, who sleep on
mattresses and two beds. There is no toilet or running water.
According to U.N. figures, at least 12 million children in
Africa have lost one or both parents because of AIDS. This is
80 percent of all AIDS orphans in the developing world.
The number of orphans in Africa has increased by 50 percent
since 1990 while falling in other regions. The United Nations
says there will be 53 million by 2010, some 30 percent of them
bereaved by AIDS.
The burden of this disaster is borne by extended families,
most often grandmothers, who might have otherwise dreamed of
returning to their home villages for retirement at the end of a
tough life.
Kanotu Mumo moved to Kibera, home to 800,000 people, when
her husband died about 25 years ago in eastern Kenya. "I can't
remember. It has been so long. When my husband died the
relatives threw me out and sold the land."
Unlike many of the grandmothers, doleful and worn down by
their fate, Mumo smiles and jokes. She says she cannot remember
her 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 to
death by a mob after he was caught stealing. "I am embarrassed
to talk about it but it was due to the unemployment."
She lives close to the railway line that runs through the
sprawling slum, acting both as a pedestrian thoroughfare and
place for traders to lay out shoes and clothes.
She sells her charcoal -- the slum's primary fuel -- for a
few shillings profit, after buying from a nearby wholesaler who
carries it to her hut.
SCHOOL
Like other grandmothers interviewed by Reuters, Kanotu Mumo
comes to the Stara school in Kibera to clean twice a week.
Their grandchildren attend the school and are fed from huge
vats of steaming maize porridge and beans.
The project, supplied and funded by Dutch charity
ChildsLife International, the U.N. World Food Programme and
Kenyan aid agency Feed the Children, was started seven years
ago by a group of Kibera mothers, after friends died and left
them to look after their children.
The school on the edge of Kibera houses more than 500
lively children, 70 percent of them orphans, dressed in green
uniforms.
More than 30 of the children are HIV positive and receive
anti-retrovirals from a nearby clinic in the slum, supplied
against vouchers from the school.
The small size of the premises means classes are noisy and
overcrowded, with up to 80 children of mixed ages. The school,
headed by dynamic Kibera resident Josephine Mumo, has proven
skilful in raising support.
Singer Harry Belafonte, Barbara Bush, mother of President
George W. Bush, and actress Drew Barrymore have been backers.
Without their grandmothers and projects such as Stara, many
more orphans in Kibera and elsewhere would end up as
glue-sniffing street children or child prostitutes.
Josephine Mumo says that when the mothers started the
school, they brought in children who had been raped as they
went door-to-door begging for food.
SURVIVE FOR THE CHILDREN
Many of the grandmothers are themselves weakened by HIV as
well as old age, making it even harder for them to feed their
charges.
Peris Owuor, 50, is a Kibera grandmother looking after
seven grandchildren. "Sometimes my body does not feel good and
I cannot go to look for food," she said.
Owuor, whose husband died of AIDS in 1998, washes clothes
to make money, at 150 Kenya shillings ($2.25) a day, and tries
to 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. She
also sells charcoal.
"I try to look after them like other children but it is
very difficult because of my low income. Sometimes there is not
enough for all of them," she said.
"My main aim is to stay around long enough to make sure the
kids can get an education and find jobs," said Mujenge, who has
lived 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. I
cannot go back."
Grace Atema, 65, looks after three grandchildren and her
daughter, mother of two of them. She washes clothes twice a
week to raise money.
"I put everything I get towards the children. But I worry
what would happen if I died. How would they survive?" she said.
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