ASK relatives and neighbours about Iris Jacques and they will tell you about the lady who would stand outside her gate, bag in hand, looking for someone, anyone, to give that bag to.

Inside the bag would be a piece of meat, a live chicken or even a piglet.

“One thing about ‘Goddy’ you know, she nuh want to have anything that gives anybody trouble,” one of Jacques’ many godchildren, Paulette McIndoe said.

“If she have a fowl – sometimes you see Goddy at the gate with something in a bag. And you hear her say ‘you want this fowl yah?’ and I would ask her why she giving it away and she would whisper ‘it start to give trouble’,” McIndoe said. “Goddy, give away the fowl.

“Sometimes mi pass and mi seh ‘Goddy how you stand up out here so? Goddy have a little bag in her hand. Guess what Goddy have? A piece of meat, looking for somebody to give it to. And sometimes she say ‘is not you mi want to see today enuh. You see Cherry?’ And I will go and call Cherry and Cherry come and get her parcel. She always try to give more than what she ask for. Goddy don’t ask for anything, she always try to have something to give. She don’t ask. You have to feel like giving Goddy something. But she always have something to give. She just wants to give something,” McIndoe said.

She explained that even if that ‘thing’ giving trouble was one of her many pigs, Jacques would not think twice about giving it away.

“Goddy use to raise pigs, a whole lot of pigs, bees and donkeys. And Goddy manage her donkey herself. When it was pig time, if a pig got away she would call you and say come here come help me back up the pig. But after a while, she give away the pigs because she don’t like anything give anybody trouble,” McIndoe told the Sunday Observer, during a visit to Jacques’ home in Coley Lot, Trinityville, St Thomas on Wednesday.

Well-known in the rural community as ‘Goddy’, Jacques is famous for her many household remedies for healing various ailments.

“Growing up just across the road from Goddy, if you belly hurting you, my mother would say ‘Goddy over there?’ Because Goddy always have peppermint, healing oil, eucalyptus oil, campher black in water – she always have something to stop you from travelling the extra mile to the hospital,” McIndoe recalled. “You could count on Goddy. And even when I grew up and start having children, one day my baby belly was hurting her and Goddy said ‘wait there’. And Goddy come and give me some little fine bush and say, ‘boil this give her and if her belly don’t stop, find the hospital’. And immediately the belly stop,” McIndoe laughed. “And the baby starts sleeping. I don’t even know until now what that bush was, but she give me and me boil it and the baby drink it and got better. I didn’t have to take her to the hospital.”

But there were still some unanswered questions from the centenarian’s god-daughter.

“And there is something I can’t understand about Goddy. Because two years ago I was passing and Goddy eyesight was so good, all when I don’t see Goddy, Goddy see me. And when mi come and look for her she would say ‘mi see you yesterday a pass, you nuh look in here but mi see yuh’. Last year mi come and look for Goddy and when mi look mi see Goddy have a Bible reading without glasses and mi just in my 50s and mi have to use glasses from mi in my 30s. And Goddy reading without glass. So mi stand up and mi look and mi seh, Goddy tell mi something how you read without glass, and mi want know how you live so long, because mi want live long to’. Goddy say ‘Let me tell you something you see, Paulette, don’t give yourself nuh trouble. You nuh understand mi? If a saltfish, a salfish, but don’t give yourself nuh trouble’. There is something about her, if she saying something to you, you have to listen to her because you have to get it right. She tries her best to make sure you not only get it but get it right.”

McIndoe said that one would never catch Jacques on the road, as she never believed in even going to the neighbourhood shop, but would instead ensure that she purchased everything that she needed at the supermarket, because once she gets home that was it, until her next visit there.

When asked if what was being said about her was true, the centenarian, whose hearing, sight and movements are still intact, responded:

“You said it,” drawing laughter from family and friends who had gathered around.

“I’m sick but I’m not mad,” she declared amidst more laughter.

Jacques explained that she was born and raised in Penline Castle, St Thomas, where she attended the community’s school. After leaving school at age 15, she started dressmaking.

At the age of 19, Jacques left Penline Castle for Coley Lot, before marrying her young love, John Jacques.

“I was married from I was a young girl. I meet him as a child in school, we laugh and talk but we neva deh!” she stated. “Until parents get involve and we had to get together and get married. So I get married when I was a young girl.”

John, who was a police officer, died in 1962.

“After you hear you decide and married to a man, you don’t expect the man to throw you a road but you haffi expect anything. But I was not fearful for his life as a policeman. Mi neva fraid for his life, we just live up. But in those days you never have no trouble like now so we neva fear for him life.”

Jacques gave birth to one son, Roy, but he passed away seven years later, after falling ill with fever. She later adopted her sister’s son, Earl, who Jacques referred to as her only child.

“See my one child deh,” she said, pointing at Earl Jacques. “He is for my sister but I raised him. As a matter of fact, I raised plenty of them — 14 children. But that’s my son. I don’t bring him. Is my sister son. But I grow him as my son,” she declared.

Jacques said that in growing up, she had a good life living with her parents and she got saved in the Baptist Church at age 11 years. There she was a member of the choir. Today, she still sings her favourite hymn ‘I must have the saviour with me, for I dare not walk alone’.

Jacques said that she loved to cook and stopped doing so because others are now willing to do it for her.

However, her son Earl explained that while she would still want to cook, she has not got used to doing so on a gas stove and still holds firm to the old-fashioned wood fire which they cannot allow her to do now because of her age.

But Jacques said that she is not fussy about what she eats now, as whatever is provided for her she will eat and be satisfied.

“This is satisfy time now. You can’t get what you want now. Want you want it nuh deh now so you just don’t worry you head over that and eat what you get,” she noted. “I don’t worry with goat. But I will eat chicken and a piece of beef and mi will eat a piece of mutton too you know,” she said.

“I was a big apiarist (beekeeper) woman about the place but that was long-time business. I don’t remember much about it. But bees used to sting mi until I had to go to the doctor and things like that but it don’t trouble me because I deal with it at the doctor.

Jacques said that it’s her belief that one of the reasons for her long life could be because she “lived good with people”.

“But why I live so long really leave in God’s hand. Mi can’t tell you that,” she said. ‘Mi can’t live so long in this world and don’t give God thanks. People come after me who are not talking, not seeing, and all those things but mi still see well and read same way,” she said. “Mi have mi good foot. Nothing nuh do mi foot dem. Mi up and down same way.”

Her son said even at age 95, Jacques was still very strong and only now just started to show signs of aging.

“Generally, she doesn’t have much illness,” he said. “Because when she goes to the doctor, her pressure is OK. And if you ask her now she tell you she not feeling any pain. But sometimes she feels a bit weak and that is probably because of her age.”

He recalled his mother, whom he has lived with all his life, as being a disciplinarian who did not stand for “any and anything”.

“For instance, in her days when she sent you to the river, we never have the fancy things to wash pots. So when she sent you to the river to scour the pots, if a little dot was left on it when you come back, you had to go back and make sure that it was done to her satisfaction,” Earl recalled.

“We never have scotch brite and those things, we had some kind of grass and we would draw them up and the root part we usually mix it with the sand and then we got down to business,” he said. “The first thing we did was hold the pot and rub it in the sand and then after that rough part come off, we use the grass root along with the sand and refine it. And it used to shine. You could see you face in it. Those are the days when you would put ashes on the pot to prevent it from burning.”

He said that his mother had a lot of bees at the front of the yard which she inherited from her husband. He recalled her putting on her veil and long gloves and tackling the bees on her own. He said that he would watch as the bees would swarm around her and she would get a number of stings. This, however, did not trouble Jacques, as she reached the point where she would enter the boxes without gloves and her arms would be covered with the insects. He later got involved and would himself receive a number of stings, but he too got accustomed to them after a while.

“Sometimes when the bees made a swarm, I would climb the tree and cut down the swarm and hand it to her. I used to get nuff bites, but after a time you just get used to it. I remember one time cutting down a swarm off a tree about a half-a-mile away putting it in a box and walking with it on my head to the house,” Earl recalled. “Sometimes when people ask her how she live so long she would tell them is the bees bites and honey.”

Jacques was also a farmer on a plot of land well cultivated with coconut and pimentos. From this, she would make coconut oil for sale.

“She would pick up about 50 coconuts and she would break and husk them on the farm and carry them home. The same night she would grate them and set them to make oil. In the mornings when she wake up she would get something and skim off the oil and the remainder she would boil. Then I would be the transporter to carry the oil to the various persons in the district. So she used to make and sell coconut oil.”

Christine Jacques, daughter-in-law to the centenarian, describes her as a no-nonsense person, whose solid teachings can take persons through life.

“She doesn’t really mince words, she just tell you what she means and move on,” said Christine, a basic school principal. “And then she will tell you that is me, that is how I see it. But normally if you listen to her you will find your way through life. Because what she saying to you – probably you don’t like it – but she is one of those persons once you have been through her school you can face life anywhere. She just don’t let you see the good and don’t let you see the bad, she helps you to understand that this life is no bed of roses and even if it is roses remember it has thorns. And because she has the old-time kind of life whatever she teaches, you can really make it,” she said.

Christine said that much can be said of the centenarian, who, for a single woman, built her two-bedroom house and a four-room house on the premises by herself after the passing of her husband. Jacques was also a member of the Coffee Industry Board.

Neighbour and friend, Suzette Taylor-McKenzie described Jacques as a true friend and a humorous person who loves ’nuff’ meat.

“I remember one day I cooked and I gave her some lunch and she called me back and said, ‘you know what, the food nice you know, but guess what, the meat little bit. Mi eat nuff meat! So she really very jovial and she love nuff meat. I just love her so much,” Taylor-McKenzie said. “I take her as my best friend.’