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"I am 125 today," beamed Benito
Martinez, as he joined the birthday party at his local old
people's home in this central Cuban city.
| Dressed
in his Sunday best of freshly-ironed shirt and trilby
hat, he seemed determined to prove that laughter and
music are the secret of a long and happy life.
A huge,
toothless grin formed over his well-aged face as
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the hand of one of his young nurses. They began to
dance to the tune of a local guitarist.
Those legs of his might date
back to the 19th Century, but they still have plenty
of rhythm.
Benito Martinez's life story is
short on detail, but very long on years. He says he
was born near the Haitian town of Cavaellon in 1880.
Looking for work, he travelled over to neighbouring
Cuba by steamship in the mid-1920s. He planned to stay
for only a few months, before going back home.
But he never left. He says he
worked for a while on one of the biggest ranches in
eastern Cuba, which happened to be owned by Fidel
Castro's father.
He later helped construct the
original highway across Cuba, before settling down in
a small farming community outside Ciego de Avila.
Hard work
A few weeks before the birthday
party, we sat together, on old wicker rocking chairs,
outside his small one-bedroom shack.
Benito lives alone, although a
local helper cooks and cleans for him. He has never
been married and never had any children.
| "You
see those trees there," he says, pointing
at an avenue of tall Cuban Royal palms. "I
planted every one of them." He then shows
me with great pride the small vegetable plot,
which he still tends. |
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Hard work, not the
pleasures of family, are what appeared to have
sustained this determined man over the decades.
He drinks alcohol only occasionally, no longer
smokes, and eats mainly rice, stewed black beans
and fresh vegetables.
His claim to be the
world's oldest person has the backing of the
Cuban government. Benito Martinez is the star
attraction of the country's recently formed
120-Club, an organisation promoting healthy
lives for Cuba's most elderly citizens.
No recollection
One of the proudest boasts
of the Cuban revolution is that despite being
one of the poorer countries in the world, it has
managed to raise life expectancy of its citizens
to 77 years, equal to that of the US.
The last time the club met
earlier this year, Cuban experts said that they
believed Benito Martinez was probably around
119. Comfortably older than the current official
world record holder, a Dutch woman who is 114.
There is, however, no
definitive proof of Benito's claim
Although it does appear
certain that he has lived in Cuba for the last
80 years, what is unproven is how old he was
when he arrived from Haiti. He has no birth
certificate or any other documentation.
He speaks a little Creole,
yet he has almost no recollection of what, if he
is 125, would be the first 40 years of his life.
But his conviction is
convincing.
I ask him his age a final
time. He looks me straight in the eye.
"Believe me," he says. "I know
the year when I was born. 1880."
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