Elizabeth Isreal, known as Ma Pampo is believed to be the World’s Oldest Lady

Dominicans have become aware that their own Elizabeth Isreal, also known as Ma Pampo, is believed to be the world's oldest living human being. Ma Pampo, the daughter of a freed slave, was born on January 27th, 1875, in the days of candles and gaslights, just 37 years after the emancipation of slavery in the British Caribbean. At the age of 12, Elizabeth’s school days came to an end at the Portsmouth school-she started to work on the Picard Estate for less than a penny a day for about 90 years. Elizabeth retired about 22 years ago when she was just over 100 years old. As most of us cannot perceive our past history, Ma Pampo is a link to our past.

In the year Ma Pampo was born, Queen Victoria was on the throne and the president of the United States was Ulysses S. Grant. At the time there were only 37 states in the United States. A year after her birth, Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone and, up to today, Ma Pampo had never owned a phone. It was three years after her birth when Thomas Edison created his prototype incandescent light bulb and in 1897, an Edison pioneer, Lewis H. Latimer, whose parents were escaped slaves in the United States, had invented the carbon filament light bulb, which was responsible for the widespread use of the electric light around the world .

Ma Pampo got married in her 40's and had one child and three grand children. Her married life was short, as her husband had passed away not too long after their marriage. She speaks a version of English called Creole Patois, which is a combination of English words mixed with words from other languages. She has lived in a tiny wooden house for nearly a century, which was purchased in the early 1900s for nineteen dollars and was considered to be expensive in those days, in Portsmouth.

Ma Pampo had spent most of her life working on the Picard Estate in northern Dominica. Even at age 70 she was a hard worker and was in a work gang called the old people's gang. The work was hard and very demanding which required physical labor like weeding using a cutlass, carrying and spreading fertilizer, cocoa, peas and harvesting limes. Ma Pampo was the backbone of her family.
Being known as the world's oldest person, Ma Pampo attracts a lot of attention from visitors around the world who comes to visit her in her village of Glen Villian in Portsmouth, Dominica and signs her guest book, sitting on her kitchen table near her front door. She had given one of her most prominent visitor, Princess Anne, a special Bouquet of herbs which is used for making a bush tea that has healing properties.

Furthermore, out of the Dominican Republic population of 70,000, more than twenty residents are over 100 years. Two of Ma Pampo’s neighbors are centenarians. Their names are Rose Peters who is 119 years old and Virginia who is 102.
Today, Ma Pampo is 127 years old and weighs 90 lbs. Her goal is to make it to 130 years. Although her memory is not as is used to be, her speech is still very clear but from time to time her sentences would trail off. She had lost her sight in November and had lost her walking ability a couple years ago, but her handshake is still firm. Her hands are barely wrinkled and do not have any traces of arthritis. She had worked hard through her life, led a simple life and has strong faith, as she's up every morning at five o'clock to pray. As she catches the fresh breeze of the Caribbean passing through her window and hears the sound of children playing in the streets, she sometimes listens to music on the radio. Even when she had her sight, she rarely ever watched television.

Presently the Guinness book of World Records lists a 114-year old Michigan woman as being the oldest person. It is most certain that one day Ma Pampo will have the official title as the world's longest living human being.