Ida Stewart swears that her horoscope has everything to do with why death has shied away from her up to now.

According to Stewart, the prediction she read when she was a youngster said she would live to an old age and die well off.

Today, the Scorpio has good reason to believe that horoscope, as last November, she said, she marked her 122nd birthday.

Stewart, who lives in the cool hills of Devon in Alexandria, St Ann might in fact be the world’s oldest person, despite that recognition being given by the Guinness Book of World Records to Maria de Jesus, a Portuguese woman who died last week at age 115.

“My horoscope said I would live to an old age and die well off,” Stewart told the Observer from the bedroom of her quaint wattle and daub house. “I found it in a dream book long time. The fifth of November gone I was 122.”

While she rolled back the years, it was clear that father time had stamped her with his own signature, having all but stolen her eyesight, hearing, teeth, much of her strength and perhaps the will to continue living much longer.

“I am sick, man. My whole body in pain, so I’m only waiting for my call (death), but as mi roll nuh call yet, I must be satisfied. This world is not my home, I’m only here for a few days. When God is ready, I have to go. I’m not well; I only talk to you because di tongue nuh drop yet,” she said to the slow ticking of a wall clock.

Stewart said her birth certificate was unwittingly destroyed by an overzealous relative who was house cleaning after the death of her mother, but insisted that her memory is perfect.

“My birth certificate, my last sister after my mother died cleared the house with it, but I don’t forget anything; I was born November 5th, 1886,” she said firmly, leaning forward as if to peer down the tunnel of years she has been through.

Stewart has outlived just about everyone she knew from then, including her 12 siblings, her husband Leonard, who died 20 years ago, and even her very own daughter who passed away in November at the grand old age of 86.

“I had one single daughter who was born in 1922,” she said. “Her name was Edna, but we called her Dottie. She had nine children. She was buried on the 10th of November gone.”

Regret laced her voice as she recalled that she was unable to attend the funeral in Friendship district.

Eyes practically closed, as if the lids were too heavy for her to support, and groaning every now and then from the pain in her limbs, Stewart said that based on the Bible, which she can no longer see to read, the world is at the end of its rope.

“I’ve seen everything already. “Everything that I’ve seen I find it in the Bible, it fulfilling. Nations against nations, disease and pestilence,” she said almost sorrowfully, rubbing her hands across her sightless eyes which have all but lost their lashes.

She reflected on her early years, saying that they cannot be compared to modern times.

“Those days were nice, but these times, O God, bad mind and grudgeful people in the world now,” said the woman who was born and raised in Longhill, St Ann.

She still wears her wedding and engagement rings and is quick to say why.

“After mi nuh want nobody again; mi married to God,” she declared, chuckling while rubbing the emblems which her beloved farmer had given her.

Stewart reels off dates with accuracy a calendar would begrudge, and is very much mindful of how much things and times have changed. But even while she has modern conveniences, she still uses the kerosene lamp which graces her humble bedroom.

“The electricity is there, but I’m not used to it, so I don’t bother with it,” she said. “But look at it, kerosene oil was shilling a gallon, now it’s $300 a gallon. This ya time a money time.”

Probably Stewart’s only vice is that she smokes tobacco, the virtues of which she extolled.

“Suppose I tell you why I smoke?” she asked, then explained that before she started she didn’t approve of her husband smoking.

“My husband couldn’t smoke let me see, but I had a tooth that used to hurt me, and a young man told me to smoke it [tobacco] to get rid of the pain, and from that day till now.” she said, the sentence left hanging with the suggestion that the pain stopped.

While she marks time, Stewart is surrounded by several of the grand and great grandchildren who she helped raised in some way or other. Ironically, she is stronger than her stepdaughter, Agatha Stewart, her husband’s outside child who is ailing in addition to being blind and partially deaf.

When the Observer asked Agatha how old she was, she replied: “Ask Miss Ida, mi nuh know.”

Agatha’s daughter, Esther Anglin, who was raised by Ida, said Stewart in her twilight years is “miserable” but she owes her a debt of gratitude.

“My mother had me, but Miss Ida raised me from I was a child,” said the 50-year-old Anglin.

She described Ida as someone who loves to give jokes, is “strong and a good cook”. She said efforts are being made to obtain another copy of Stewart’s birth certificate from the Registrar General’s Department, an apparent effort to prove her age.

“From I know Miss Ida, she a big (old) woman,” said a resident of the community who gave her name only as Nancy.

Forty-four-year-old Paula Lynch, who grew up meters away from Stewart, remembers her as a jovial woman with a kind spirit.

“Ever since I was born I have known her as an old lady with a walking stick,” she recalled. “She is a kind woman with an impeccable memory up to this day. She also liked to read her Bible.”

Lynch also confirmed that Stewart has been smoking tobacco for more than 90 years and that she would engage in the habit with her husband.

“They were a loving couple who loved to smoke tobacco together,” she said.

“When she was 80 she broke her leg and nobody thought she would be able to walk again because of her age, but she defied all odds,” said Lynch.