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Hoots & Havers March 2007

An elderly Norwegian lady was beside me on an aircraft the other day and we fell into conversation. She was on her way to Edinburgh to visit her son, she said. There had been no snow in Norway until early February. She had a new steel hip and it was quite good but she still needed a stick. Care homes are so expensive round Oslo and good quality staff was rare. Many people go to Thailand where age brings respect. There care is much cheaper and the sunshine warms old bones.

It’s a subject that becomes of interest to us all. If we’re not fortunate to survive into old age ourselves, then it is likely that a parent or other aged relative will have brought the matter into sharp focus. My mother is watching her contemporaries coming to the end of their independent lives and tumbling into their graves, many after a few bleak months in care homes. Some are excellent - Dalweem in Aberfeldy being one such - but many, very many, are not. And lack of kindness towards the helpless aged is not a vice peculiar to the Norwegians.

The plane trip was following a visit to my revered Uncle George. He was a doctor in Nairobi for 55 years and, amongst the swarm of bees that still inhabit his bonnet, is euthanasia. He once enrolled me in the Voluntary Euthanasia Society without telling me, which filled me with delight. Anyway George is still in Nairobi, about to hit 88 and now pretty frail. He’s virtually off his legs, and his eyes and ears no longer function very well. But he has old age well gripped and he sees no need to put himself down yet.

He now lives in a four-roomed single story house under a corrugated iron roof. Out the back live three Africans. Richard, Josiah and Charles. All are between 35-45. The latter is a petal and does most of the cooking. Josiah is in charge of the garden. Richard is George’s body servant, administering medicines to his bad eyes, helping him dress and also his main driver, taking him to his many social engagements.

The three of them have a pretty cushy life, as George is a notoriously soft touch. They have one week in three off to return to their homes in the west of the country where they have their small farms. Richard has 12 acres and a little shop. Charles about ten and a meal mill. Their wives do the farm work, growing and picking tea which brings a useful income. George has given the capital for the land and the businesses to them over the years.

I had a discussion with them. They treat George like fine porcelain. They respect him because he is old and wise and generous and a daktari. And, so long as he doesn’t go sick and they catch him before he falls and breaks a bone, he can remain in his house and they keep their jobs. The average income in Kenya is £130 a year. Even if George paid them ten times the average wage, it would cost him less than £5,000 a year. Cheap care.

When George gets cross with them, he threatens to move to Fairseat, the local jerry home. It costs £9,000 a year. All Brits welcome. I picked up one of George’s mates there. It’s about three acres, dotted with neat purpose-built cottages for each individual and people can move into a central building when they need more intensive nursing care. Lilies, bougainvillea, fluting birds, sunshine, a fat, friendly mongrel and smiling assistance whenever wanted.

Is it possible that most of the difference in the quality of care in such places as Kenya and Thailand is down to capitalism? Over there residents are cherished because they mean incomes and profit. With the NHS the elderly are famously ‘a burden’. The sooner they die, the sooner they stop costing the rest of us money.

* * * *

From Kenya, I went down to South Africa where my sister has lived for 40 years. At the moment she is plagued by a monkey. It’s one of the residents of the small national park adjacent to her house. Theirs is the first building on a new development  - a beautifully designed open-plan house that fits round them like a womb, has extremely comfortable visitor accommodation and, suspended from the side of a hill, has wonderful views from its veranda. Its total cost was around £150k.

Anyway, the impala roam within yards, the baby zebra snorts at you from the bottom of the garden and all is Eden save for the nasty grey monkey that lives a solitary life apart from the rest of his kind. Humphrey it has been named. Humphrey looks upon the house as an interesting addition to his feeding range. If he can get access to the house, rich pickings are to be found in the kitchen.

The guardians of this food trove are not so foolish as to leave a window ajar or a veranda door open if they leave the premises, but they do if they are in the house. And this gives Humphrey his chance. If he ventures in extremely carefully on tiptoe, his presence may not be perceived and he may be able to lift a banana or something similar and make his escape, leaving nothing but its absence, a turd or two and a trail of dusty foot prints to show he had been there at all.

But quite often Humphrey’s presence may be rumbled. He can lose concentration and be cornered in the bathroom. Or found with his arse poking out from a store cupboard, and then it’s High Noon. If his exit is clear, he may just scarper. Or not. He may raise his upper lip in a confrontational snarl, or jump up and down, make a fake charge and flicker his eyelids in aggression. My sister is forced to shout and wave her arms to retain ownership of her territory. Or arm herself with the catapult that lives in the kitchen. The animal is large and strong and my sister would not be confident of the outcome should the situation degenerate into fisticuffs. She is disconcerted by the extraordinary malevolence evident the creature’s eyes.

But what really pisses her off is that, as well as being an ill-natured, aggressive, bad-mannered brute, it’s also a chauvinist of the deepest dye. It shows nothing but contempt for her but reacts to her husband with utmost respect and cringing deference. She can’t stand the thing.

See also:

www.jamesirvinerobertson.co.uk