Kate Holt photojournalist

Benjamin Lokoron is 75 years old. Lying on dirt floor, with some plastic bags and a peace of wood as pillow, he is crippled by rheumatism, and can barely speak or move. The small round hut he lives in is falling down around him, there are gaping holes in the plastic and straw roof; and pools of water surround where he sleeps, remnants of the rain the night before. Unable to get up to use the toilet, and with nobody to take him, his excrement litters the surrounding floor.

“I haven’t eaten for two days”, he tells me. “My daughter in law bought me some pumpkin leaves two days ago, but that was the last I ate. I am too weak now to eat much else. My son often beats me, he gets drunk when he can’t find work…”

Benjamin’s desperate situation is reflective of that of many older people throughout South Sudan whom I have met while working there on photographic assignments for Helpage International. The country is emerging from 23 years of civil war. In the aftermath, the elderly are frequently neglected by their families. Like many, Benjamin lost two of his sons in the fighting. Everybody witnessed atrocities – yet nobody talks about them. The son who remains, and his wife, drink heavily, unable to see a way out of the poverty they have succumbed to.

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