There are many peeps out there claiming to know the secret to longevity, but maybe we should be asking Mbah Gotho.
He would be the Indonesian man believed to be 145 years old, with official documentation showing his date of birth as December 31, 1870.
It’s no surprise then that he has outlived all of his siblings and four wives, as well as the children they bore him.
Some details from the Daily Mail:
…he is survived by his grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren.
If correct, that makes him significantly older than the verified oldest person in the world ever, a title that belongs to French woman Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122…
He said he has been through it all and would not mind passing on.
‘What I want is to die. My grandchildren are all independent,’ he told Liputan 6 on Tuesday.
Suryanto, Mbah Gotho’s grandson, said his grandfather has been preparing for his death ever since he was 122, but it never seemed to come.
I suppose it’s a nice problem to have, although his claim to fame has yet to be made official:
Whether or not he will ever be listed as the world’s oldest man however is open to question, as the paperwork has so far not been independently verified.
If so he will join two others without verifiable records who are purportedly older than Mbah Gotho – 171-year-old James Olofintuyi from Nigeria and 163-year-old Dhaqabo Ebba from Ethiopia.
These days, his grandchildren say Mbah Gotho mostly sits listening to the radio because his eyesight is too poor to watch television.
For the past three months, he has had to be spoon-fed and bathed as he has become increasingly frail.
When asked what his secret to longevity is, Mbah Gotho replied: ‘the recipe is just patience.’
Here’s Mbah in action, from last year when he was a little more mobile:
You want to see him puffing away? Check out the beginning of THIS video – maybe he’s been Twisping along this time, which might explain how he’s stayed in such decent shape all these years.
Now we wait for the Guinness Book of World Records to do their thing.
[source:dailymail]
