On 101st birthday…
CENTENARIAN Sukhdia Mohabir, who celebrated her 101st birthday last December 30, expressed gratitude to God for seeing her to that age.
For the celebration, she was joined by members of the Lions Club of East Canje, in Berbice.
Born at Plantation Mara, East Bank Berbice on 30th December, 1909, she was the second of six children, three boys and an equal number of girls.
She was married at the tender age of 11 years but her husband died without the couple getting any offspring.
Sukhdia single-handedly cleans her home, launders and irons her clothing and is fluent in the Hindi Language.
Bespectacled and petite, she is in good health but suffers from a slight hearing impairment,
Sukhdia said, being the first of six children born to her Indian immigrant parents, she never had the opportunity to attend any school and had to assist with minding the other siblings.
Her mother, a weeder and her father, a cane harvester, would leave their home very early in the morning for the backdam, leaving her in charge at the household at High Dam, Fyrish, Corentyne, also in Berbice.
She also recalled being told that the family previously lived at Mara, an East Bank Berbice agricultural community, prior to living at Corentyne where they moved when she was just three-months-old.
Sukhdia remembered that, at Fyrish, they lived like a family with the other ethnic groups. “We could have scolded any child. We were all contented with what we possessed. But now, there is a lot of cursing and fighting and discontentment. People grudge one another for everything. Is a sad state we are in.”
She reminisced that, after her marriage to Mohabir (only name given), at age 11 years, she, too, laboured in the backdam.
“I worked hard as a weeder and cane harvester,” she said, pointing out that, when she was finished in the backdam, she would go and plant rice and vegetables, which they ate.
Sukhdia criticised the modern day use of fertilisers on plants, declaring that the chemical kills people slowly.
Lamenting that she is not receiving a pension, due to having undergone an abdominal surgery while still very young, that forced her to quit the sugar estate employment, she said, while at home, she supplemented her husband’s earnings, as a cane harvester and barber, to assist with their daughter Latchmin, who is now residing in England with her two children, Lennox and Reshanna