Not elder law: do I really want to live this long?
Throw out the anti-agingfood supplements and forget surgery. A South African woman, who claimsto be the world’s oldest living person at 132, advocates fresh food andexercise as the keys to longevity.
Moloko Temo holds an identity cardfrom the South African government confirming her birth on July 4, 1874,but international authorities have not verified her age and TheGuinness Book of Records gives the title of oldest person to a Frenchwoman who died aged 122 and 164 days in 1997.
Whether a world record-breaker or not, Temo is extraordinary in South Africa where the average lifespan is less than 50.
Temo, who is now blind, attributesher longevity to a diet of fresh foods and the backbreaking tasks ofrural life in the farmlands of Mamohwibidu, a remote village in the farreaches of South Africa’s northern Limpopo province.
As a young woman, she remembers working hard.
“We would walk very far to fetchfirewood. We would make very big clay pots and use them to collectwater from a hole or river, and carry them back on our heads,” she toldReuters.
Temo, a widow who has outlived fourof her children, now enjoys the company of her two surviving daughters– themselves senior citizens — and several generations of more than100 offspring.
She is a sports fan and hopes tosurvive long enough to cheer on the home team during the 2010 SoccerWorld Cup, which is being hosted in South Africa.