By Jeune Bailey Vankeric
NURNEY Village centenarian Caroline Marks, nee Benn, passed away peacefully at her granddaughter’s home at Lot 192 Amsville Housing Scheme, New Amsterdam last Thursday.Her granddaughter Wendy Burnette told the Guyana Chronicle that her 102-year-old grandmother had complained of not feeling too well and was taken from her home to the New Amsterdam Hospital. Afterwards she was taken to Amsville where she died surrounded by her relatives and loved ones.
On August 16, 2014 during an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, ‘Mama’, as she is fondly called, sang the old time favourite hymnal, ‘It is no secret what God can do, what he’s done for others, he’ll do for you. With arms wide open he’ll pardon you, it is no secret what God can do,’ as she sat on her back stairway of her daughter Ulele’s home, overlooking several pig stys at Nurney Village, Corentyne.
The bespectacled woman chanted the hymn, made popular by the late American country singer Jim Reeves, after being asked about the secret of her longevity.
Benn had gotten ‘a clean bill of health’ after visiting medical practitioners two days before her 100th birthday.
Then, she mused ‘Dis time nah long time’ as she conversed with the Guyana Chronicle in the village she called home for over a century.
“In my younger days you could have ran around naked, without the thought of being sexually abused, but not now. You don’t know who to trust now. It was a must that you go to church. You had to remember God for it is He who has given us the strength but now dem young people nah want to go to God’s house,” she had said.
She added: “Lang time we worked hard at the farm, planting rice, plantain, eddoes, cassava and other cash crops to supply the family needs but now some people don’t want to work but yet them want to eat.”
Born on August 16, 1914 to Delia Benn and Francis Marks, who incidentally also lived at Nurney Village, ‘Mama’ , who is the lone survivor of five siblings, recalled her childhood years when after working with her siblings and parents on the farmland, they would go to the Missionary Church for service.
“We went there without shoes,” she had recalled, while pausing intermittently, and gazing ahead, tilting her head to the left as if to relive those fond moments.
“Coconut oil was used to rub our skin. My sisters and I had our hair plaited and ribbons affixed… We were a happy family. I went to the Scotts School when CN Natoo was the Head Master, but I left at Standard Three as I had to then assist with household chores while my older siblings and parents left for the farm.
“I was never married but I got three children – Ruth, James and Ulele. I continued working on the farm, right here at Nurney… I never left this place… My children are all grown and the eldest one with whom I once lived, died, so I am now with my youngest child.
The centenarian had advised those striving to reach the century to “Honour your father and mother that your days would be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”