On an unpaved road past a large oil refinery in eastern Freetown, Sierra Leone, an imposing gate surrounds the King George Home for the Elderly. Inside, half a dozen buildings face a leafy inner courtyard. Inside these buildings, fifty-three senior citizens share rooms, meals and lives. 

There’s a word – orphans – for children who lose their parents. It’s a word far too familiar in countries like this one, with a history of brutal war, but even here, there’s no word to describe another kind of tragedy – parents who lose their children. 

Between 1991 and 2001, over 50,000 people died, and more than 2.5 million people were displaced, in a civil war sparked by regional conflict. That’s a lot for a country of just six million people. A simplistic narrative of cruelty in combat became notorious internationally: drugged up child soldiers wielding machetes, chopping off limbs and burning down villages. 

The aftermath, however, is largely ignored -- as are the residents at King George’s. They are almost all parents without children, chance survivors of a war that their families weren’t lucky enough to survive. Or, they are the disabled and the impaired, tolerated when times are good and resources are plentiful, but left behind when things take a turn for the worse. 

While in much of the Western world, the elderly often live in group facilities, in sub-Saharan Africa, it is an anomaly for senior citizens to live in a group home. Most of the time, the elderly stay in at home and are cared for by their children, their relatives, or the community. The elderly have always been considered a resource – their wisdom and knowledge guides younger generations. But the war here changed that. The numbers of dead and displaced can only hint at a way of life fundamentally different than just a 

decade earlier. 

The stories that the residents tell of how they came to King George’s are very similar: there was nowhere else to go. No one at King George’s really wants to be there, but they make do. With meager resources, the center provides one meal a day, and bread and tea in the morning, but cannot afford to offer the residents much more. The home gets occasional donations from individuals and NGOs, and some goods from the government, but it can’t pay a living wage to its staff or upgrade facilities. When residents fall ill, they must be cared for at hospitals or clinics nearby. 

Some residents stay on their beds alone, lost in their own world of disability and isolation. The more capable and alert residents of the King George’s spend their days resting on the porches of their buildings, or lounging outside in broken down wheel chairs set up like lawn chairs. They listen to the radio and spend the day chatting. They do each other’s hair and laugh together in the warm afternoons before they retreat to their small metal cots when the sun starts to set. Without a generator or any municipal electricity, there’s no reason to stay up past dark. The day has simple and consistent rhythms: breakfast, prayers, sitting, eating, socializing, and sitting some more.