ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses intergenerational relations, well-being and the societal role of the elderly within village communities. It examines elderhood in terms of 'completion' rather than in terms of the distinction achievement/ascription. Elderhood primarily means social status, as it is expressed in the social relationships, alliances, offspring, wealth of cattle, and knowledge that expand the self. The Sukuma speak of elderliness in terms of seniority and elderhood. The Sukuma can regard very old people, especially if they are famous healers, as ancestors during their own life-time. In the case of Sukuma culture the missing link is that each individual accumulates involvement over time and becomes more and more deeply rooted in the social interactions of the community, so that his/her later death as an elder cannot be an abrupt end of that zone of interaction, but means life fading into an ancestral state.
