None of us likes getting old! Neither do the animals in the Serengeti! I was so impressed with the elephants and the stories our guide told us about them, that I want to tell you a bit about their social lives. These guides are native to the area, and take many hours of classes to learn African animal husbandry. I value their words.
As many of us know elephants live in a matriarchal commune. Male calves stay with their mothers until puberty then they travel with the other males in a parallel herd. At breeding time they compete to see who gets mating rights. When a male gets too old to compete he is ostracized from the group and wanders in solitude until his 6th set of teeth decay and he is no longer able to eat. Then, he becomes dinner for a pride of lions, jackals, and hyenas.
It’s not a pretty picture, but it reminds me, in a way, of how we treat our “elders”. Too often they are isolated in a small apartment or in the home they lived in while raising their children. Sometimes they are abandoned to a nursing home where their friends and family forget to visit them. Now, I’m not condemning nursing homes or families who place their loved ones there. My own 98 y/o mother lives in one. She is in a wheel chair and can’t take care of herself at home. Neither can anyone care for her without the special equipment which the nursing home has available. She has lots of family around her who visit her regularly and she, and we, all love the Nuns and nursing staff. They do a wonderful job.
Now, my mother’s mind is not as sharp as it was years ago, but she still reads the paper everyday and knows almost all of the people who visit her. But she’s almost 100 years old! In her 80s and most of her 90s she was, like so many of her peers, a great source of wisdom. Her grandchildren, some still in their teens, love her and visit her. They relish over her stories especially her jokes which I first heard many decades ago.
But not all old people are that lucky. Many, like the solitary elephants, have little social interaction. And our human experience is diminished because of it. Some cultures have high regard for their elders, but sadly ours seems to have little. We treat them like the elephants treat their old males.
Interestingly these solitary male elephants become angry, hostile, and aggressive! Who can blame them! Isn’t that what happens to so many of our elderly?
In my next post I want to tell a story of one of these “crabby old men” elephants we encountered. But, that will have to wait.