workingwifey

Tonight I was watching something I believe on this History channel about rites of passage in different cultures. They explained a ritual in South Africa where a boy around 20 years of age gets sent away to the middle of no where to get circumcized, and must have it performed by a “traditional surgeon” who does not have any formal training. Then the boy must live in a hut and can not eat or drink until he is fully healed. By himself. People in the U.S. probably can not imagine that type of tradition. Then the program went on to explain how in the United States, it is common for families to send their old parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to “assisted living”, “retirement”, or “nursing” homes to be taken care of. In many other countries, the community will take care of the old people as they age, and they hold them in high regard for their experience and wisdom. The program stated that in the Apache Native American tribe, for a girl to become a woman, the ceremony is not written down anywhere. The elder of the community will state the tradition orally. Without the elderly to communicate this to the rest of the tribe, the tradition would cease to exist. So how come in the U.S. does not normally take care of their elderly as a community? The program said that it costs around $5000 per month for an old person to live in an assisted living facility. Most people that are my age (20’s or 30’s) can not even afford to pay that much per month to live TOTAL, so how in the heck are we expected to pay that when we can not even work for a living? At least children without a home are able to go to orphanages and not have to pay for it (probably because of child labor laws), so why can’t we have some type of program for the elderly like this as well? Maybe we do and I just don’t know about it? I mean I know there is social security and medicare but social security alone is not enough for most people to live on. Hopefully by the time I am old enough for this to have an affect on me, things will be different and I won’t have to worry so much.

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