LISBON, Portugal (AP) – A woman who lived to see five of her great-great grandchildren born and was believed to have been the world’s oldest person has died in Portugal at the age of 115, officials said.
Maria de Jesus died Friday morning in an ambulance near the central Portuguese town of Tomar.
She had been listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest person. That title now falls to an American, 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, who lives in a Los Angeles nursing home.
Born Sept. 10, 1893, de Jesus was widowed at 57, outlived three of her six children, had 11 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
On Friday, she ate breakfast normally, but then was taken to hospital because of a swelling, her daughter Maria Madalena told state news agency Lusa, without elaborating.
De Jesus was 115 years and 114 days old.
“I regret the death of this lady, she really was the sweetest person,” town councilor Ivo Santos said in Tomar, central Portugal, 84 miles north of Lisbon.
There are now only 82 women and nine men verified as being 110 or older, according to gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles.
But he said there could be hundreds more in places such as China, India or Africa where they would not have caught the attention of the Gerontology Research Group, a small volunteer organization that tracks supercentenarians and verifies their birth dates through birth certificates and other documents.
In the genes?
Coles said the supercentenarians appear to share one trait that might account for their longevity — they come from families whose members are long-lived.
“Whether they drink alcohol or not, it doesn’t matter. Whether they smoke cigarettes or not doesn’t seem to matter,” he said. “The thing that does seem to matter is that they chose their parents wisely.”
“It’s in the genes. It’s in the DNA,” he said.
Before de Jesus, Edna Parker of Indiana had been the world’s oldest living person until she died in late November. She was 115 years, 220 days old.
Baines — the new titleholder, born in Georgia on April 6, 1894 — spent most of her life in Ohio, where she worked as a dormitory housekeeper at Ohio State University in Columbus, Coles said. Her only daughter died at age 18.
Coles said he asked the staff at Western Convalescent Hospital to tell Baines she is now the oldest living documented person in the world.
“She’s very healthy. Her only complaint, as far as I can tell, is arthritis in her left knee,” he said. She uses a wheelchair.
He described her as mentally sharp, saying “she doesn’t forget anything.”
Baines voted in the November presidential election, the Los Angeles Times reported.
She voted for Barack Obama “’cause he’s for the colored people,” said Baines, who is black and the daughter of former slaves.
ONLF Statement
On Exploitation Of Ogaden Oil & Gas Wealth
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has stated on multiple occasions that we will not allow the exploitation of the oil and gas wealth of our country as long as our people are denied their legitimate rights to self-determination. In that context, the ONLF affirms that if reports that Petronas will resume oil exploration activities in Ogaden are true, this will not be tolerated.
When our people reclaim their rights to self-determination, all legitimate ventures aimed at exploiting the oil and gas wealth of our country will be entertained. However, until such time, all companies interested in engaging in such activities should be on notice that the Ogaden is a war zone and that the Ethiopian regime does not have effective control of Ogaden, nor does it have the legitimacy to enter into contracts on behalf of our people.
Petronas and similar companies should consider the damage to their reputation if they effectively enter into a contract with a regime engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ogaden. These companies would be better served by seeking to play a role in resolving the long standing conflict between the Somali people of Ogaden and successive Ethiopian regimes so that they can pursue their economic interests in an environment where they are welcomed by the people.
We urge Petronas to exercise corporate responsibility and steer clear of Ogaden so long as our people are victims of genocide and their rights to determine their own future are violently denied. To do anything less would be to act as an accomplice to a regime engaged in yet another African genocide.
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
By Kaleyesus Bekele | The Reporter
The Malaysian oil and gas company, Petronas, is to drill three oil exploration wells in the Ogaden basin this year.
Petronas has hired Weather Ford, a Dubai-based company, to carry out the drilling. Reliable sources told The Reporter that Weather Ford has agreed to drill exploration wells in the Genale block, block 11 and 15 of the basin. They disclosed that Weather Ford has mobilizing its crew and drilling rigs, adding that officials of the company will soon come from Dubai. Weather Ford is engaged in oil and gas exploration work in the Middle East.
In 2004, Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB), a Chinese company, was contracted by Petronas to conduct seismic survey and to drill exploration wells in the Gambella block owned by Petronas. Petronas acquired the Gambella block, which covers about 16,000 sq. km of land, in June 2003. ZPEB collected seismic data on 1500 km. Accordingly, in 2005 ZPEB drilled the first wild cat well in Jikaw locality, 175 km away from the Ethio-Sudan border. The company drilled the second well in Jakaranda locality in 2006. Both wells turned out dry. Petronas spent 32 million dollars for the drillings and testing. ZPEB withdrew from Gambella after it finalized it work in 2006.
However, in the same year, Petronas hired ZPEB to conduct seismic survey in the Ogaden basin. In July 2005, Petronas acquired three blocks in the Ogaden basin – Genale block (24,420 Sq km), Kallafo (30,612 sq.km) and Welwel-Warder (36,796 sq.km). In 2006 ZPEB started collecting seismic data in the three blocks.
In October 2006 South West Energy hired ZPEB to conduct a seismic survey in the Ogaden basin. In December 2005, South West Energy, a company owned by an Ethiopian businessman, acquired a Degehabur block covering 21,187 sq.km. of land. In January 2007, ZPEB commenced collecting seismic data in the Degehabur block.
On Apill 24, 2007 the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked the Abole exploration site in the Degehabur zone of the Somali Regional State. Seventy-four civilians, including nine Chinese workers, were killed in the attack. Seven Chinese workers were abducted by ONLF fighters in the same incident. However, they were released two weeks later. Following the attack in May 2007, ZPEB evacuated all its employees working in Ethiopia. Though the Ethiopian government has made attempts to convince officials of ZPEB and SINOPEC to resume operation, the companies have declined to send their professionals back to Ogaden.
By Leah Oatway | The National
ADDIS ABABA // As 10-year-old Biruk Nigusie nibbles at the corner of a small foil packet, his tall, graceful mother covers her face with her hands and sobs.
Athe Iatseda Herpha, 30, and her son Biruk, 10, are both HIV-positive and receiving antiretroviral therapy. [Photo: Jeff Topping]
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Biruk and his sister Tigist, 14, watch silently as Athe Iatseda Herpha weeps for the fate of her children at the family’s tiny mud home on a school site in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. She, her husband, Sirag, and Biruk are HIV-positive.
Only Tigist has escaped the epidemic that is affecting people in towns and villages along the main motorway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti.
Like many families in the community, the Nigusies are destitute, soon to be made homeless and, for two weeks of every month as they struggle to survive on the US$30 (Dh110) Mr Nigusie makes as a security guard, extremely hungry.
The silver packet Biruk clutches contains a nutritional supplement called Plumpy’nut, a high-energy, nutrient-enriched peanut-based paste used in famine relief. It keeps him from starving to death.
More than 25 tonnes of the expensive paste recently arrived in Ethiopia, shipped from France to Djibouti and then transported by road to Save the Children warehouses in Addis Ababa, courtesy of Dubai Cares.
On Aug 26 last year Dubai Cares gave US$12,959 to ensure that the supplement reached Ethiopia’s hungry schoolchildren in the six regions most affected by recent droughts.
According to government figures, there are 6.5 million people in Ethiopia who need emergency nutritional assistance. Of those, 75,000 children like Biruk are severely malnourished.
Aid workers suggest the numbers are conservative and don’t count the four million people on emergency programmes run by the government, which for three years provide food or cash for work.
Having partnered with Save the Children on several projects last year, Dubai Cares decided to help. The charity was started by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, in September 2007 to provide primary education for at least one million children around the world.
Alemtsehai Greisling, Save the Children’s project manager for Ethiopia’s nutrition programme, says: “Schools have opened for the year but because of the food shortages and fuel costs, providing school materials to children has become unaffordable for poor families and school enrolment is down.
“Life-saving, high-energy foods are now being distributed through emergency food centres.”
Plumpy’nut does not require refrigeration or water and is extremely effective in treating malnourished children.
“It’s really a miracle. We see results within two weeks,” Ms Greisling says. But it’s a short-term answer.
This is the third time Biruk has been admitted to the nutritional programme. But with his HIV infection, he needs more than the average two-month supply of supplements.
“On average, one child takes three sachets per day for a minimum of two months. That’s 160 sachets. If they have HIV then the period could be far longer,” she says. “Their weight tends to go up and down according to the treatment they are receiving.”
Explaining how children are selected to the programme, Ms Greisling says: “The children will come to local health centres and their middle-upper-arm circumference, weight and height is measured by trained staff in order to check the status of the child and diagnose as to whether it is malnourished.”
The method used to take the arm measurement, she says, involved a simple tape divided into three sections – green, yellow and red. If a child’s arm circumference is in the green zone they are considered healthy. If it is in the yellow zone they are at risk and monitored, but do not receive the highly sought-after supplement.
It is only those in the severely malnourished zone, red, who are given the Plumpy’nut. “Those in the red zone usually only have two or three days to live unless they receive immediate nutritional support,” Ms Greisling says.
Biruk, who hopes to be a doctor one day, has been in the red zone twice in the past year. His mother said he is doing well, but with the family forced to vacate the one-room home of mud and sticks they stay in free of charge, on land owned by the school where Biruk is enrolled, his future is not assured.
“The Plumpy’nut has been very useful,” Mrs Nigusie says. “Biruk has gained weight and strength. He has been discharged from the programme before but he relapsed again because he became very thin. The first time he had to drop out of school. Now he is back in school again.
“We get some salary from my husband but it is a struggle with food prices at market rising. When we have food we eat three times a day. When there is none we don’t eat.
“We don’t have a home but the school has allowed us to live here for some time because they know our circumstances. We have to leave within three months because they need the space. We don’t know where to go. We can’t rent any house with this salary.”
A 10-minute drive from the Nigusies, in a small town called Dukem, also on the main motorway, a 30-year-old widowed mother tries to feed Plumpy’nut to her year-old son, Doctor.
Meseret Girma has known she is HIV-positive for six months. Her husband died just before Doctor was born, of tuberculosis. Local health workers suspect he had Aids.
Doctor has tested positive for HIV antibodies but it will be another year before his mother and doctors will know whether he is HIV-positive or if he just received his mother’s antibodies through her breast milk.
He weighed just 4kg when he arrived at the health clinic five months ago. He progressed to 7kg. Until his status is known, he will continue to receive Plumpy’nut to maintain his weight.
Ms Girma and her son have no family nearby and, as she is unable to work regularly because she suffers from anaemia, paralysis in her legs and headaches, she and her son now rely on the generosity of their neighbour, Yiftusirat Kaftiymer.
“I don’t have any family at all or a house or a job,” she says. “Sometimes I have labour work but when I get ill it’s difficult to work. I had some land which I have sold and so we rely on that money and are learning handicrafts to try and sell things at market.
“Today we had breakfast because we still have money from the land that I sold. We eat ingera [a traditional Ethiopian bread]. We eat as much as we have. If we have plenty then we eat plenty. If we don’t have, we share what we do.
“I am struggling to live for my child.”
Towns like Dukem and Bishoftu are known by aid workers as “high-risk corridors”, common across Africa, where desperately poor women prostitute themselves to lorry drivers on the main motorway, so HIV rates are high.
Ethiopia’s food crisis has led to an increase in the number of HIV-infected children and adults dropping out of antiretroviral therapy (ART) programmes, because without food the medications are too strong for the patients’ bodies, says Wondu Magen, a nutritional worker for Save the Children.
Ms Greisling says: “On one recent field mission, people were telling us of a child who collapsed because he was taking ART without enough food. On an empty stomach, the medication is also not as effective.
“At the health centres we have adults telling us they will take the medication away with them, at the staff’s insistence, but they won’t be taking it because without food it’s just too strong.”
Asked how difficult it is to live with HIV, alongside the struggle for food, Mrs Nigusie breaks down in tears.
“I have already given everything up to God,” she says, covering her face with her hands. “I just hope my children will live a long life. I wish for Biruk to grow strong and healthy and that someone will look after him and support his education.”
Watching on with sad eyes, her daughter says she hopes to be a journalist one day.
“I want to write about my family and people like us,” she says. “Tell people what it’s really like here.”
By Abiye Solomon
For a long time the question for me has been to go or not to go. But I couldn’t make up my mind. I was afraid and confused. Even worse, I have been completely immobilized by the unknown. Time and fate have conspired against me. Everyday, I lose a little bit of my memory. I feel I must go but…
I have lived in America for longer than I care to admit. I came during the “good old days.” There must have been at least eighty people who came to Bole Airport to bid me farewell. I now remember only a few.
My father was there. Just before boarding he advised me: “Now listen, son. When you go to America (ferenj ager), you will be on your own. I am not going to be there for you. You must be strong. You must always remember why you are there. Work hard and learn. Get your degree and come back to serve your country.” My eyes welled up in tears. I couldn’t cry. “A boy doesn’t cry,” my father always said. Crying was a sign of weakness. I didn’t want him to remember me as a crying weakling.
My mother was also there. She was in tears. She must have felt like I was going to war or something. In desperation she said to me: “I don’t know why you have to go. Please, stay. You have everything you need here. Why must you go to a strange land? You won’t even have anyone there to give you water if you are thirsty. America… you are going to be a stranger in a strangeland!” I told her I’ll be back soon. Not to worry.
My little sister? She just reviewed the list of things I was to send her after I arrived in America. “Don’t forget the dress. It must be red with laces, and the shoes, the handbag… You better not forget. I will write and remind you.”
There stood my high school buddies. Tough guys. They were all at my farewell party. They’d joke: “See you in Washington! Don’t forget to send the I-20. You better write regularly or we’ll get you.”
I sat by the window in the plane. For the very first time in my life I felt I was totally alone. I cried. The stewardess looked at me. She seemed to understand. May be she had seen hundreds like me before. I was gripped by fear. What if I never see my parents again? My relatives… friends? What if I never come back? What if…
As the plane thundered towards the blue Ethiopian sky, I silently bade my last farewell. I felt a sense of emptiness. I was enveloped by self-doubt. I felt nauseous. Then I noticed I was in a jet plane for the first time in my life. I marveled at the magnificent flying machine. A little over an hour later I had left the soil of my birth. I was a stranger.
Twenty years later I think about home. But I am afraid and confused. My father had died from “stress” during the Derg era. My younger brothers and sister were jailed and tortured by the Derg. Luckily, they made it to the U.S. as refugees. I lost many relatives and friends to the government’s indiscriminate violence. My mother also passed away. I think from a broken heart. She was a mother of five. None of us were there to bury her. Ethiopia also died, a slow and painful death. Her children killed her.
Now, I often think of going back. I don’t know why. Nobody knows me there. I have no family or friends there. Few relatives would even remember who I am — better yet whose son I was. I don’t even know anyone there to write a letter.
I am impelled by an irrepressible homesickness. Then I sober myself with a bitter dose of reality. I read of the blind ethnic hatred and fratricidal warfare. I listen to the poisoned words of leaders who seem determined to send this poor nation into the grave of oblivion. I see the silver-tongued intellectuals spin theories of ethnic chauvinism and disunity.
I see my countrymen scheming to rupture the chain of their collective destiny. I hope my father will forgive me. I have to cry!
I think of my father’s advice. I have learned some of the wisdom of the West. I fear not all the wisdom in the West could help Ethiopians discriminate between good and evil. I doubt my little knowledge could begin to mend the broken pieces of Ethiopia.
I also remember the words of my mother. I have everything I need here. I don’t even know anyone there. Nobody will give me water if I am thirsty. Nobody knows my name. Will I be a stranger in a strangeland?
(Originally published in January 1992)
