kwa moyo wangu wote: How Old Is She?

At the first funeral I attended back in May, I noticed that the woman who died was 96. I thought that was old and I wondered what the average life span is here. This led to a conversation about a “really old woman.”

“How old is she?” I asked.

“150” was the reply.

“one hundred and fif - TEEN?” I asked?

“No, one hundred and fif - TY”

My next question was if she still could walk and had all of her mental faculties. Someone replied, “I don’t know, I haven’t seen her in 10 years.”

So I asked, “could she walk when she was 140?” A legitimate question don’t you think?

I couldn’t believe it, so we started planning a trip to visit this woman. Then I started asking around, I wondered if other people knew what her age was. Then the age kept going down. She’s 140, she’s 120, she’s 115. Bishop Kweka just shook his head in amazement that someone would tell me that she was 150. He said that we should go and check the baptismal records of the church and they would at least have her date of baptism. No one has done this.

So we went to visit her. One of the church elders who lives in her area of Uswaa went along with us. I think its customary that a church elder goes along on home visits. I asked him how old she was and we were right back at 150.

First we stopped to visit her daughter. This woman had to have been between 85 and 90. She sat and talked with us and laughed and held her great grandchildren. When we left to go to this woman’s mother’s home, some in our group were confused thinking that this was the old woman.

The old woman is old. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that old.

She was curled up under a blanket on the bed and her granddaughter walked in the room yelling “Bibi, Bibi” to wake her up. She sat hunched over on the bed and periodically she would spit into a small canister on the ground.

The first thing she did when she figured out the pastors were there to visit her was to bow her head and to pray for us. I asked if I could take her picture and she thought it was laughable that we would ask her to smile. She realized that there was an mzungu (white) pastor there and she laughed again.

We served her Holy Communion as well and it took her about 3 minutes to drink the small cup of wine, but when we were done she prayed the Lord’s Prayer perfectly.

The granddaughter had tea to offer us when we left the woman’s room. She said “If I don’t serve you tea, bibi will never let me hear the end of it.” So we drank tea courtesy of a very old woman.

I asked the granddaughter how old she was and she told me that they celebrated her 150th birthday in 2006.

“one hundred and fif - TEEN?” I asked?

“No, one hundred and fif - TY”

So that would make her 155. Some in our group are skeptical, but I believe it!

The old woman in this picture is the daughter of the really old woman. Also pictured are her daughter-in-law, her grandson, her great grandchildren, and one mzungu!