A 117-year-old Jamaican woman has been crowned the world’s oldest living person. Violet Moses-Brown, of the Duanvale, Trelawny Parish, earned the title after the recent death of Italy’s Emma Morano, born in 1899.
The world’s oldest human is Jamaican Violet Brown, who was born on March 10, 1900. Congrats Violet. pic.twitter.com/AnjXdHK1Kz
— Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) April 15, 2017
The supercentenarian, whose husband died nearly 40 years ago, credits her longevity with a diet that includes abstaining from pork and chicken. She does however enjoy fish and mutton, and occasionally indulges in “cow foot,” according to the Jamaican Observer . Other food favorites include sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, oranges and mangoes.
“Really and truly, when people ask what me eat and drink to live so long, I say to them that I eat everything, except pork and chicken, and I don’t drink rum and dem tings,” Brown said in 2010 interview with the Jamaica Gleaner, when she was 110 years old. “You know, sometimes I ask myself, ‘Am I really 110 years old?’ because I don’t feel like 110.”
Brown is a former seamstress, domestic helper, and cane farmer. Her eldest child, 96-year-old Harold Fairweather, is believed to be the world’s oldest living person with a living parent. In her 2010 interview, Brown proudly shared that she was still able to make her bed, and remembered poems that she learned as a child.
She also recalled walking miles to fetch water in the mornings before school. “I tell you, these young people these days have it easy – piped water, taxis and buses to bring them where they want to go, everything to their convenience,” Brown said. “When I was younger, and even as an adult, I had to work so hard that sometimes when I look back, I cry at how hard I had to work to make a living for my family.”
Despite her hardships, and growing up in post-emancipation Jamaca (which she likened to slavery), Brown remains thankful to still be alive: “If God gives me more life, I will take it.”
Peep her talk with Loop New Group below.