In Zambia the average life expectancy has fallen to 37 as Aids has taken its toll. With their children gone, grandparents have had to become parents again. Words and pictures: Gareth Bentley
An old woman crouches in the shadow of a scarred and tattered tree. Dust swirls around her as she lifts her improvised hammer to hit the grey mass of stone between her feet. Rock fragments shatter off with each blow, scattering into the dirt around her. Pausing, she gathers the pieces with cracked and calloused hands, adding them to a slowly forming pile. The oppressive heat is becoming almost unbearable. Still she works, her arm rising and falling, smashing, scattering, gathering.
Later, the shadows begin to lengthen, the heat of the day slowly passing. The hammer still rises and falls, though now more slowly. Quietly, she begins to sing. It is a song of her tribe, of the old people. A song of the hills and skies, of fields and crops, of cattle coming back to the kraal at dusk.
Memories flood back, memories of her life as a young woman in her father's village, of her husband, of her children, laughing and running, of trees and open spaces, of the rumbling clouds that carried the first rain, the herald of new life.
How foreign this life is, so far from home, in this crowded and dirty place. Three of her children are dead, their lives swallowed up by Aids. In ordinary circumstances they might have nursed her. Today they are gone.
Suddenly her reverie is interrupted. A skinny girl dressed in a dirty pink dress, stretched taut over her distended belly, hugs her arm. She is hungry. The old woman lays aside her tools, laughs happily and lifts the girl into her arms. "Not yet, my child. First we must sell these small stones at the market. Then we shall eat."
The girl is trailed by four other children. Linking hands, they follow the old lady, weaving between the shacks, chattering and laughing at her jokes.
The old lady strides ahead, her head held high, shouting greetings to her neighbours as they pass on the dusty track. Her four orphaned grandchildren have become her children. A mother again, she must do all she can to keep them alive.
Esnart Daka belongs to a generation of forgotten people. Esnart and many like her live in Ngombe. The sprawling township began as a compound for labourers who worked on a large commercial farm. Ngombe means "cow" in Swahili; the township takes its name from cattle that used to graze on the land.
Today Ngombe, like every other township in Zambia, is coming to terms with the devastation of the HIV/Aids epidemic. In Lusaka alone, 20 per cent of the population is estimated to be HIV-positive, and Zambia's average life expectancy has dropped to 37 years. A generation of young parents has been destroyed, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of young orphans.
But the disease has done more than kill. It has broken the social structures and culture of the people. Traditionally, Zambians had many children, to ensure they would be looked after when they were too old to work. Now the children are gone; the elderly, in the final years of their lives, must again assume the role of parents for their dead children's children.
Without land to grow crops, or animals to herd, they must learn new skills, new ways to provide for themselves and their young families. Some crochet or knit small items of clothing, to sell at the local market. Some smash stones dug from the red earth around their huts to sell for a few kwacha to the building trade - anything to try to provide shelter, food and, if possible, an education for their grandchildren.
Often ignored in coverage of the epidemic, they must find their own ways to survive. Without complaint, without bitterness or anger, they adapt to their new roles in this new culture, this urban village. They have to keep going for the sake of their grandchildren.
The people in these photographs are part of Chikumbuso Women and Orphans Project - chikumbuso means "remember". The project, which is run by widows in Ngombe, supports grandparents and educates and feeds more than 200 orphans. See www.chikumbuso.com