Abstract
To date, most social anthropological studies on aging in African contexts focus on care for poor older people provided by related others. The focus of this article is different as it focuses on older people with better financial means than the average: civil servants belonging to Dar es Salaam’s middle class. Furthermore, this contribution shifts the focus from care provided through related others to practices of everyday self-care, the care that these older people provide for themselves with the help of relatives in Tanzania and the USA. In order to stay healthy and cope with diagnosed chronic conditions, older participants in this study engage in physical exercises, eat ‘good food’, and go for regular medical check-ups. This article argues that these health-promoting self-care practices of older urban dwellers reflect changing experiences of aging, health, and care, and point to transfigurations of the social imaginary of aging in Dar es Salaam’s middle class.
Highlights
Most anthropological research on older people and care on the African continent focuses on the care that is provided for an older person by related others
What about those older people who are still capable of doing these activities on their own? In this contribution, I would like to shift the focus from relational care to what I call everyday self-care
Changing ideologies about aging successfully, shaped by international discourses on aging as well as altering health care settings in Tanzania, have an impact on lived relations between different members involved in a figuration, or care arrangement
Summary
Most anthropological research on older people and care on the African continent focuses on the care that is provided for an older person by related others. In Dar es Salaam, adult children as well as distant relatives engage in different forms of care, such as accompanying an older person to a health facility, washing an older person’s clothes, or helping the person take a daily bath What about those older people who are still capable of doing these activities on their own? But not exclusively, older study participants with a diagnosed chronic condition did physical exercises, ate ‘good food’, and went for regular medical check-ups in order to stay healthy or to cope with illness or frailty Their self-care activities included practices directly targeted at physical health and those that contribute to wellbeing in a broader sense
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