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Living to 100
by Tony Deyal
An island apart
The terrain, flora and fauna of Dominica are unforgettable. Except for the few villages that hug the coast and mountainsides, the island has remained unspoiled and little changed during the 500 years since Columbus first visited the Caribbean. Twenty-nine miles long and 16 miles wide, it is still a land of cloud-capped volcanic mountains and lush tropical rainforests; steep valleys with tangled lianas and tumbling, crystal-clear streams; rainbow-hued flowers ranging from magenta ginger lilies to brilliant orange heliconiae, bright pink antirrhinums to rich purple orchids; iridescent butterflies that look like flying bits of gemstone-studded brocade; and birds of all sizes, colors and plumage that coo, squawk, shrill and sing, including the national icon, the Sisserou parrot, immortalized on the Dominican flag. The country has 12 large waterfalls, six varieties of tropical rainforest and more than 365 rivers, one for each day of the year. There are hot sulfur springs and coldwater streams almost side by side. It is said that you can catch a fish in one river and cook it in the other.
Wigg John Francis, 103, attributes his long life to ‘good drink, good food’ and God. (Photo © Tony Deyal) |
Tourism minister Charles Savarin attributes Dominicans’ longevity to the island’s pristine environment. "Many people still drink water straight from the rivers," he says. "The water is naturally filtered and entirely without chemicals. There are no industrial plants emptying into the streams and the sea. Most of the country is heavily forested so that we may have more oxygen here than anywhere else."
He points out that when today’s centenarians were growing up, the island was without chemicals, fertilizers or motor vehicles. People had to walk or row their small boats long distances. Everyone had to work hard for a living, sowing and reaping their own crops as well as working on sugar plantations.
Until two years ago, Wigg John Francis, who is officially 103, tended his garden and raked his own grass. He lives in the agricultural community of Dublanc, on Dominica’s west coast. He questions the official date of birth derived from his baptismal records, saying he is really 107.
Francis remembers being adopted as a boy by his aunt in the capital. He never attended school; instead, he worked as a farmer, fisherman and sometimes gravedigger. Until two years ago, he actively supervised younger gravediggers, showing them who was buried where and which plots were still available. I asked him to what he owed his long life, and he replied sharply in patois, "Ask God. It is He who gives me sustenance." He then added, "Bien bue, bien mange." Good drink. Good food. Natural and without chemicals, a mixture of tubers and fish. Francis was not averse to alcohol, and he smoked cigarettes, although he quit some years ago. He was accustomed to exertion, sometimes rowing the 30-mile round trip to Roseau or the 10 miles to church and back with his family. He believes in bush tea and bush medicine—holistic, herbal healing. His biggest problem is "old age": His eyesight is fading and his head hurts. Yet he walks unaided, albeit slowly, and washes his own face.
Francis says he has lived a good life "as God says." He is lovingly and well cared for by his granddaughter, Theresa Jubenot, and her husband Honoré. He is clean and clear-witted. When I asked him what I could do to live to his age, he looked me up and down and then laughed in my face.
In contrast, Professor Gerald Grell, dean of the Portsmouth Campus of Ross University, an offshore medical school based in Dominica, took me quite seriously. He explained that having so many centenarians (30 per 100,000, 66 percent higher than the United States’ rate of 18 per 100,000) is highly unusual and that he is supervising a research project to determine what the causes might be. While he is not certain about the specific reasons for there being more female (17) than male (four) centenarians in Dominica, he notes that the evidence so far points to the environment as the major factor in all cases. None of the centenarians are directly related, so there is no common genetic factor. They live in different communities, so their longevity is not localized. He believes that what the centenarians have in common is that they all worked very hard during their lives, ate the basic organic foods and fresh fish that abound in Dominica, and breathed the oxygen-rich atmosphere that encapsulates the country like a bubble of good health.
Grell also points to three other important factors. The first is that Dominicans live as extended families in small, relatively isolated, semi-self-sufficient communities. They share a strong respect for the elderly; people are proud of their parents and grandparents and take care of them when they are ill or need help. The second factor is a deeply rooted belief in God found commonly in Dominica’s almost universally Roman Catholic population. Religion, not merely attendance at church on Sundays, is a way of life. The third is that Dominicans live relatively simple, stressfree lives.
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