David Dunkley, Staff Reporter
FAMILY TIES: Isabella Brown, who celebrated her 100th birthday last week, sits with her daughter Miriam Brown-Richards, 84, at their home in Bellefield, Manchester.
ISABELLA BROWN is a happy centenarian but there's one thing the 100-year-old lady from Bellefield, Manchester could do without...the pain.
"Mi glad me live to a hundred but me have a pain in my leg, I still recuperating from a broken hip and I have poor circulation of blood," she said, adding that because of her ailments she has not been able to walk. "It's not nice to feeling this pain all the time."
Brown was born in Login, Manchester on August 15, 1900. She attended the Bombay Elementery school. After leaving school she went to live with family members in Smithville, a nearby district. There she took a liking to farming.
She got married in 1939 to her late husband, Enoch Brown, who was also a farmer and died in 1958.
Mrs. Brown gave birth to six children, four sons and two daughters. One son daughter daughters died, another son resides in the United States and she lives with another daughter. The rest live around the community.
"Me don't even know, them too much me can't count," Mrs. Brown said when asked about grand and great grand children. "I have nuff though, a lot of them."
The centenarian explained that God's will has kept her going. If God didn't want it this way, she said, it would never have been.
In her "not so old days" Brown said she used to eat a lot of ground provisions such as yam, potato and cocoa and meats such as chicken, beef mutton and fresh water fish. "Yuh ca'an eat that and no give me none," she said of the fish.
Miriam Brown-Richards, 84, the daughter with whom Mrs. Brown lives, told THE STAR that even though her mom was bedridden, she is a great help around the house and a tower of strength to her. Brown-Richards explained that her mom still helps her to prepare dinner and help with certain chores around the house.
"She is my help, she is my company, she is everything to me and I will miss her dearly if she should go," said Brown-Richards, who was married for six years and had four children before her husband died in 1990.
