Perspectives in Health Magazine
The Magazine of the Pan American Health Organization
Volume 7, Number 3, 2002

It’s no secret.
You take fresh foods, clean water, pure air and lots of exercise. You add low stress, a loving family and strong belief in God. For Dominica’s centenarians, it all adds up to a longer and healthier life.

Dominica’s centenarians include the world’s oldest living person, Elizabeth "Ma Pampo" Israel, pictured here two years ago when she was "only" 125.  (Photo © Powys Dewhurst)

Dominica’s centenarians include the world’s oldest living human, Elizabeth "Ma Pampo" Israel, profiled two years ago (when she was "only" 125) in Time magazine. "The daughter of a slave, she started working on a plantation at the age of 25 and retired 79 years later," Time reported. "She ascribes her longevity to her diet—including lots of dumplings and bush tea."

Time doesn’t mention it, but Ma Pampo married in 1922 and had one son, who died at the age of 30. That was well over half a century ago. She has one grandson, who is alive and well somewhere in the United Kingdom.

Ma Pampo herself is well cared for today, and her home in Glanvillia, outside the town of Portsmouth, is clean and comfortable, if small. During a recent visit, she confirmed how hard she had to work as a child, picking coconuts and limes for a starting salary of two cents per day.

Earlier this year, because of an ingrown toenail that became infected, Ma Pampo had her right leg amputated below the knee. It healed easily and without further complications, but the ordeal left her generally bedridden. At almost the same time, her next-door neighbor and good friend of many, many years, Rose Peters, died at the age of 118. Yet Ma Pampo refuses to give up. She remains curious, lively and communicative, with a strong sense of humor. Her zest for living is evident, as is the simplicity of her life and her lack of interest in worldly goods.

Fluent in the native Kwiyol (a French patois) and Kokoy (an English-based pidgin), in addition to standard English, Ma Pampo ascribes her long life to hard work and good food. She shuns anything canned or processed. While in the hospital earlier this year—one of only three visits in her entire life to the Dominican capital of Roseau—she threw away a peanut butter sandwich, saying she would not eat anything that was not "natural." She talks glowingly of the beneficial effects of dumplings (seasoned boiled flour chunks flavored with broth); river crayfish and crabs; tuna, mahi-mahi and mackerel from the sea; and local tubers: cassava, dasheen, eddoes, yams and tannia.

Ma Pampo still loves to listen to the Kokoy programs on the radio and the Franco-African rhythms and melodies that dominate the airwaves. When I asked her what I could do to live to be her age, she laughed heartily and thought for a moment. Then she said that I should eat good food. She added, however, that food is now so polluted with fertilizer that it is difficult to trust. Then she commended me to God.

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