I grew up in a country where everything is everyone’s business!
 
All my adult life I’ve lived in a country where people generally mind their own business sometimes to the extreme.
 
Now, I’m writing about this experience because it hasn’t left me since it occurred three days ago:
 
The Good Husband and I were sat in a restaurant having a date night when I noticed a woman sitting behind me with her son in the pram.
 
“That kid’s about the same age as Chester,” I said to Harry for no specific reason. He nodded.
 
About 10 minutes later I hear the kid making sounds to get the mother’s attention, she didn’t even look at him. Her face was glued to the phone, she was furiously texting someone, maybe the baby daddy, perhaps he'd p*ssed her off.
 
Now, her son was my son’s age which meant he could probably walk and he could most certainly sit in a high chair and colour in or flip through a book.
 
The kid wasn’t free to move a limb at all: he was in a warm winter coat indoors, quite tightly strapped in his chair with a dummy stuck in his.
 
Ignoring the fact that the dummy should have been ditched at 12 months because it delays speech development beyond that point I was more frustrated by the fact that he was completely unstimulated but this is England, I thought, it’s none of my business.
 
30 minutes passed, then 40 minutes, we were coming up to an hour when the kid had been completely ignored despite several attempts to get mum's attention.
 
It was that time in the day when doting parents were serving dinner to their kids, bathing them, reading them a story and putting them to bed and this little boy was having none of that. In fact, he hadn’t received so much as a smile from his mother in the hour we'd been there.
 
I couldn’t stop myself.
 
My legs took on a life of their own before my head could take control of them; I turned to her and said, “You need to take care of your child!”
 
“I am taking care of him,” she argued.
 
“How old is he?" I asked.
 
“One and a half,” she scowled.
 
In a triumph of tact and diplomacy (because anyone who knows me knows I could have said much more) I looked her in the face and said, “He needs some kind of attention.”
 
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” she said, “he’s just being naughty.”
 
He wasn’t being naughty. I let that particular choice of wording slide as a language issue because English was obviously not her native tongue.
 
I turned back and sat in my chair and the Asian American lady sitting next to my table goes, “Oh my Gad, we were just talking about that.”
 
I should have said you and everyone else in eyeshot of her is probably talking about it but this is Britain, we make excuses for people so I simply said, “Maybe she never gets a night off" - as if that would be an acceptable excuse for neglect.
 
The lady and her baby didn’t stay long after that. Having lifted her head from her phone for the first time in an hour she suddenly realized she had been the centre of attention for a while and left. I worried about what punishment she'd mete out to her son for being "naughty".
 
That night as I tossed and turned The Good Husband woke up and asked what was wrong, “I’m still thinking about the little Chinese boy,” I answered.
 
I’m glad I said something.
 
This is Britain. We mind our own business but sometimes we shouldn’t especially when the people we’re speaking for cannot speak for themselves.
 
I know there are different forms of parenting out there and I do agree that most parents know what's best for their child. Indeed, some of the things I do would probably have helicopter parents and tiger mums around the globe tearing their hair out and I might feel the same about their practices. Ultimately we'd both fall into categories that are trying their best for their child. We're actively engaged in being parents of some form.

Nowadays people ignore bad things happening right next to them then they go home and write the now infamous "open letter" or Facebook post, a heartfelt note that will most likely never reach the intended audience - what's the point?

​I can live with most parenting styles but neglect is definitely not something I can sit next to and watch…it’s not an acceptable form of parenting.

I used to tell my English friends that we don’t need old age homes in Malawi because we take care of our old people within the family. This is certainly not universal; hundreds of old people in Malawi are completely destitute with no one to support them except the odd well-wisher.
 
With almost 90% of the population living on less than $3 a day, their own children are not in a position to care for them in any significant way.
 
Indeed, many people aged over 80 have seen their own kids die young and the one or two kids they are left with can’t even feed themselves.
 
Overpopulation is another issue here. Having too many children means that you can’t afford to educate them all so they’re bound to end up poor themselves.
 
Our own cook is now 61. He’s still fit but he has 10 children the youngest is only 6. We used to talk about him having to many kids 15 years ago when he had 7 or 8 already but such is his myopia and poor judgment that he went on to have more.
 
He says his two oldest children have left home but they are constantly coming to him to ask for money because they quite literally have nothing to eat.
 
In 10 or 15 years time he’ll be too old to work and will probably retire to the village despite the fact that there’s nothing for him there.
 
So, how could we solve this issue.
 
What format could old age homes take in Malawi? Can the government even afford it?
 
The government is currently paying for lots of things it can’t afford so let’s suppose that it could rejig things to prioritize old people. For instance, we could reduce the free goods being given to working age people to direct more towards the old.
 
Most people would be too embarrassed to take their old to a home so we’d need a structure that would allow the old to submit themselves.
 
Local clinics could be extended to include “wards” for people aged 80 or 85+. This would allow the very old to stay within the community they are familiar with. These places don’t have to be lush: a wooden bed, plastic mattresses, basic blankets and three square meals a day.
 
Cleaners would ensure the accommodations were clean and those that were too old to bath themselves received the necessary support to wash themselves and keep infections at bay.
 
In the video above you see aFelegesi the old woman with one arm sleeps on the floor without a mattress in a mud hut with a leaking roof. With no one to help her she has to cook for herself on an outdoor fire. What kind of life is that?
 
The model I propose is simple and inexpensive.
 
We Africans like to think of ourselves as having strong community links and compared to the West we do but it’s not enough to prevent this degrading old age poverty.

Whilst I was in America hosting The Money Spot program in August 2014 Apostle Debbie Viggs Founder of The International Council for Women contacted me re. being featured as on of 6 African women to be celebrated. Of course I agreed. I was both honoured and humbled. ​​
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By Heather & Harry Katsonga-Woodward

Earlier this year I told my YouTube subscribers that I sometimes call Harry, my husband, “The Good Husband” because a few months before we started dating I had created a listed entitled “The Good Husband” specifying all the traits I need in a life partner. 

A few months after this admission I revealed everything that I had on my list in this video that’s already been watched a few thousand times.