The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the widespread uncertainty of everyday lives in global capitalism. For example, uncertainties related to health and resources have been exacerbated, and it has been clearly exposed how they are both often so closely intertwined. Various ethnographies around the world have demonstrated the contextual specificities of how people pragmatically mitigate uncertainties, for example through work and cooperation. This is at once a global and a specific experience.

The expected linearity of ageing is evidently disrupted by factors in the wider world, such as pandemics, politics and the economy. Typical ‘industrialist’ categories of age assign certain everyday activities of economic production to particular life stages (Honwana, 2012: 12): education and childhood, a time of dependence; work and adulthood, a time of independence; and retirement and rest in old age, which in Uganda, is said to be ideally said to be a time of interdependence (Whyte, 2017). This feeds into the stereotype of old age as a condition of certainty, in contrast to precarity faced by youth. The majority of older research participants in Kampala are still in full-time work to provide for their families, often ‘Monday to Monday’. This challenges notions of work in the city as an activity of younger generations, and of transient uncertainty as a preoccupation of youth (Honwana, 2012; Thieme, 2018).

Woman carrying mangoes to sell in April 2019.

Many sources of income have been interrupted by social distancing regulations in Uganda. Many people rely on daily income to feed their families, so relief efforts for social protection at a household level are increasingly urgent[1],[2]. To friends in Kampala, this has emphasized the importance of social networks, and particularly neighbours, who can share whatever they have, sometimes assistance they may have received from further afield. And besides resources, the current pandemic situation has shown how people often ‘engage with the ambiguity of our surroundings’ through solidarity and dialogue with each other (Whyte, 1997). Particularly accentuated is the role of mobile phones as a tool to navigate conditions of uncertainty. We saw this across our fieldsites, in the ways people use mobile phones to overcome distances and maintain relationships and care for older people. And we’ve since all seen how important phone calls and WhatsApp have been to adapt to unprecedented times and keep us in contact. This uncertain context also supports the role of ethnographic research, which allows us to look at the patterns in dialogue, how people engage with the wider and indeterminate world, and how this responds to and shapes certain trajectories.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Anguyo, I and Storer, L. (2020) ‘In times of COVID-19 Kampala has become ‘un-Ugandan’, LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/04/09/kampala-epidemic-un-ugandan-society-in-times-covid-19/
• Honwana, A.M., 2012. The time of youth: work, social change, and politics in Africa, 1st ed. ed. Kumarian Press Pub, Sterling, Va.
• Whyte, 2017. Epilogue: Successful Aging and Desired Interdependence., in: Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives. Rutgers University Press., NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY; LONDON, pp. 243–248.
• Thieme, T.A., 2018. The hustle economy: Informality, uncertainty and the geographies of getting by. Progress in Human Geography 42, 529–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517690039
• Walter, M and Bing, J. (2020) ‘Uganda’s Economic Response to Covid-19: the case for immediate household relief’ Centre for Development Alternatives (CDA). https://cda.co.ug/2140/ugandas-economic-response-to-covid-19-the-case-for-immediate-household-relief/
• Whyte, S.R., 1997. Questioning misfortune: the pragmatics of uncertainty in Eastern Uganda, Cambridge studies in medical anthropology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York.

[1]Anguyo, I and Storer, L. (2020) ‘In times of COVID-19 Kampala has become ‘un-Ugandan’, LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/04/09/kampala-epidemic-un-ugandan-society-in-times-covid-19/

[2] Walter, M and Bing, J. (2020) ‘Uganda’s Economic Response to Covid-19: the case for immediate household relief’ Centre for Development Alternatives (CDA). https://cda.co.ug/2140/ugandas-economic-response-to-covid-19-the-case-for-immediate-household-relief/

The “Work 60+” group after their weekly meeting. Photo by Marilia D. Pereira

A PwC study (2013) forecasted that in 2040 57% of the economically productive population in Brazil would be older than 45 years old. The research listened to 100 companies to analyze how they are preparing to absolve this contingent. The executives said that the main barriers to work with old people were their lack of flexibility, their difficult to engage with technology and their incapability to keep themselves up-to-date. As a positive aspect, they highlighted the opportunities that an intergenerational team can achieve and the fact that old people are more mature, ethical and loyalty. 

From my informants’ perspective, I can say that work is a key issue to their self-steam and sociability. The dream of being retired with full time dedicated to themselves last for one or two years. After that, they feel incomplete and sometimes angry or guilty. Some of they engage in social work as volunteers, as Mauro (71) who teaches dance classes to old people in a catholic parish or Cleo (63) who works once a week in a public hospital helping patients with heart diseases. Others feel they still have a lot of energy but want to try something new. Marta (59), for example, said that at her age she just couldn’t consider herself old, or useless. Because of that, after retiring as a teaching, she became a certificated tourist guide and plans to keep working until her “mind is fine”, and her “body is strong”. John (77) also wants to keep himself productive. He said he feels guilty not to be working during the business hours and he needs to complement his incomes after retirement. He works as a consultant, but he recognizes that “job offers are becoming more and more scarce”. Robert (64) explain that this is the way things work, “companies want the Youngs, so you will be replaced when you become old”. That is the reason why he stopped looking for jobs as a sales manager and started working as an independent realtor and as a Uber driver even after he retired. 

While companies are closing doors to old people, they are creating their own opportunities. Some of them are becoming entrepreneurs as Wania Barreto (63), who is launching a Telemedicine start up, or Veronique Forrat (61) and Marta Monteiro (64), founders at Morar.com.vc, a startup that works as a match-making for people who want to live in cohouses. The cohousing idea was born during “The Reinvention of Work 60+” program, created by Lab 60+ to prepare old people to what they call “the second half of their professional lives”. In practice, the reinvention of work means the reinvention of old people themselves. Their methodology focuses not in their past occupation but in their skills and talents and how they can be useful to market demands. The collective “Work 60+” was also created after this program. Every Monday around 20 people older than 60 years old meet at my field site to discuss how they can offer their expertise to companies in a flexible model of work, more empathetic, collaborative and with fair remuneration. As one of the group founders explain “no one here is looking for a job, we just want to keep working, we want to be part of the game, we know we still have so much to offer”.   

But what could they offer? If we consider that the population over 50 years old is responsible for more than 34% of the annual consumption in Brazil and that 57% of them consider they can’t find products and services that fit their needs, we could say their insights are more valuable than ever. After all, who could know better how to achieve what the silver market needs than the old people themselves?