An abandoned wheelchair outside an office in Lusaka.
LUSAKA, ZAMBIA -- Broke and disabled, he left his home village, Samfya, for the big city in search of help. He ended up a beggar.
Fred Kafupi, 58, is a nomad. He struggles to maneuver his broken wheelchair to the markets and through the streets of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city. Kafupi has been disabled for nearly a decade. A stroke left him broke, homeless and alone. He says the stroke damaged his spine and paralyzed his right arm.
At 58, Kafupi has beat many odds. In Zambia, the average life expectancy is 39. More than 15 percent of the population here is HIV positive, so most public heath messages and efforts here are aimed at AIDS care and prevention. The disabled, Kafupi says, have to fend for themselves.
Today, a black, dusty cap covers his gray hair. His skin and clothes are dirty. He does not have access to clean water. But despite his age and physical limitations, Kafupi has managed to build himself a shelter made of plastic rods and old sacks. He does not have a blanket, but says he uses his clothes to keep warm at night. Though Kapufi’s only owns a few plates and pots, he says thieves often attack him at night.
“I never realized [it] happened,” Kafupi says of his stroke. “I w[o]ke up only to be told I had a stroke. I was told that the cause of the stroke was not known.”
The stroke left him unable to continue his business, working in the charcoal industry. After his injury, he used the remainder of his savings for medicine and food. He says his sister and adult sons are not in a position to help him because they too are very poor.
“I came to Lusaka to [look] for help,” Kapufi says. “A friend of mine told me that they help old people like me in my condition in Lusaka. I wanted a wheelchair. But when I went to Social Welfare, I was told [there] are many [like me] and that I have to register.” The list of the registered disabled who were waiting for assistance, he discovered, was long.
More than two years after registering at the social welfare, Kafupi still has not received a new wheelchair or medical assistance. In 2008 he was given a government transportation subsidy of 78,000 kwacha, about $15 USD, to buy a bus ticket to visit his sister. He says he took the money, but used it for food rather than a ticket.
The Forgotten Elderly
Kapufi is not the only vulnerable, elderly person in Zambia. There are tens of thousands of people who do not have access to social services or familial support. Traditionally, African culture has regarded elderly people as a source of wisdom. Grandmothers and grandfathers were cherished by their tribes and families. But today, more and more elderly people, especially those with disabilities, are neglected, abandoned or abused by their families. There are more than 800,000 elderly people live in Zambia and more than a million neglected elderly people across sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa.
Andrea Masiye, 70, a lawyer for the Global Action on Aging, an NGO based in New York, says elderly people in Africa are ending up in hospices after being abandoned by their families. “This is what has led to the overcrowding of hospices. Governments simply can't take care of its own senior citizens,” she says.
Kafupi says his two sons, who live in Mansa, in the northern part of Zambia, do not support him financially, though they know about his situation and have seen how he survives in the city.
“Most families abandon their elderly because they are struggling financially,” says Judith Bozek, a nun who manages the Chawama Cheshire Home, a facility in Lusaka that cares for the elderly. Bozek says while many of the elderly men and women she cares for have been abandoned by their families, many more have lost all of their children to AIDS and have no one to look after them.
Kafupi says he still believes the government of Zambia will come to his aid. All he really wants, he says, is a new wheelchair. In the meantime, he will continue to beg for alms on the street.
But as the economy here worsens, life is becoming increasingly difficult for Kapufi. Fewer people, he says, offer him kwacha on the street.
“Sometimes when I ask for money, [I] am told they also have a grandfather just like me they are helping, hence they don’t give me any,” he says. Per day he says he can get as much as 3,000 kwacha, or $.58 USD, which he says he uses to buy food.
“The government should help us. We are suffering,” says Kapufi as he prepares to get in line in front of a local store that offers 100 kwacha notes to the homeless. “When I am given the wheelchair and money I came here for, I want to start selling sweets and other groceries.”
