ALTHOUGH his concerned son tries to restrict him from doing too much, this does not stop Henry Percival Cameron from walking to the beach for his regular bath, trimming the trees in their

yard, digging out unwanted weeds around the yard or feeding the animals at 5:00 o’clock every morning.

“He gets up early mornings before I wake up and head down to the seaside to get his bath. Him say him go sap him skin,” the youngest of Cameron’s seven children, 45-year-old Roy, said of the

102-year-old.

“I try to stop him, but sometimes when him wake up I don’t wake up yet. Him wake up 5:00 every morning because he wants to feed the fowl and those things,” Roy said. “When the sun is hot he wants to be all around working. Is a long time him don’t see him hoe because I have to hide it from him or him don’t stop work.”

A not too pleased Cameron, who was sitting on his verandah in his Sand Shore home, Black Hill, Portland was quick to respond.

“I could help myself more, but my son don’t allow mi to do anything. Him quarrel with mi,” Cameron said. “Several times when I would do this and do that him stop me and say I must not do it because I was born 1912. Him don’t want me to work, but I help myself very much.”

Cameron explained that he does a lot of exercise, this includes going around and trimming his banana and plantain trees along with any flowers around his home.

Born on April 23, 1912 in Port Antonio, Portland, Cameron grew with both his parents and his nine siblings. He attended the Buff Bay and the Tranquility Elementary schools and had no trouble remembering the names of his two teachers.

“My hearing is not so nice, but otherwise everything is running quite alright,” Cameron told the Jamaica Observer of his physical condition. “I’m under good protection — under the protection of God.”

The centenarian said that, as a child, he loved playing cricket and marbles with his four brothers and five sisters.

As he got older, he spent his days in the field and later secured his first job at Caymanas Estates in St Catherine.

“Is 1931 I started to work with the Ministry of Agriculture. I was a banana pollenator, producing seeds from banana,” Cameron explained. “I would take the pollen from one variety of banana and work on another variety.”

As a pollinator, Cameron was transferred to a number of banana plantations in Jamaica before finally ending up at the Caenwood Agricultural Station in Portland where he was originally from. Here he spent some 20 years before the plant closed its doors in 1985.

Today, 29 years later, Cameron, who worked as the paymaster at Caenwood, still has his hard cover notebook with the names of the men who worked with him and the dates on which they received payments.

But, while Cameron was a hard worker and loved his job, he ensured that there were extra incentives for him to go to work in the mornings. This was in the form of one of his young attractive employees, and after some time he made her his wife. But this union was not the forever after that Cameron had hoped for.

“The same man that was working with me — because I was responsible for people to work — and one that was working directly with me at that, I never know that he would do me something like that,” Cameron said shaking his head. “When I gone to work him gone to another spot to work and when I get to find out him move in with mi wife. So mi just leave her and make them transfer mi back to Castleton Gardens, and she go back to her mother in White Marl in Spanish Town. So I divorce her and marry to Gwendolyn McLeary.”

Cameron’s second wife died 11 years ago.

But the centenarian confessed that before he got saved in 1980 he was a ‘runner’.

“Ah nuff girls I had, yes, because I was a runner of the world. Now I am still in the world, but I am not of the world again. My life has been changed in 1980,” he stated.

Cameron is a member of the Mystery Church of God, a walking distance from his home. Up to a few weeks ago he was still walking to church.

Roy described his father in glowing terms.

“Ah blessed man that to mi man,” Roy said. “Very good man to me. If him don’t see mi come in he is not going to sleep, even now. He is setting up until I reach home, and then him tell me that him wondering what happen to mi, if police lock mi up or whatever. Him just sit up and wait and anybody him see pass him ask if they don’t see mi,” the centenarian’s son said.

Roy said that his father’s sight is very good, and he still reads his Bible and checks the electricity bill on his own. And, he said, his father loves to eat.

“He will eat anything, but is a porridge man. He loves cornmeal porridge,” Roy said. “You see Saturday morning time? All you hear is ‘Roy don’t forget mi meal’, that is porridge. Sometimes you see him outside here hunting fowl nest. Anywhere the egg is him have to find it. “Sometimes I have to say ‘mind you fall down’, because when him scalding egg is three or four one time.”

Even at his age, Cameron has no problem adding something strong to his diet.

“Sometimes him will come and say ‘Roy yuh don’t have anything strong to drink’. He will drink anything strong. If you carry a quart bottle of any liquor and give him, by one week it gone. Sometimes him ask me to get a jelly for him to chase it,” the younger Cameron added.

Roy feels that a part of the reason his father has lived for 102 years is that he feeds on the meat and eggs from yard fowls.

“Is a man like this… him used up him common fowl dem man. So him eat up him common fowl meat and common fowl eggs. So I feel is part of it.

“Is me and him here for a number of years now. Him wife pass off 11 years now so I am here taking care of him and I don’t leave him at all,” Roy said. “Even if I go out to work I have to just be focusing on home because I am wondering how him getting on. I had to stop him from go down to seaside man because I don’t know what can take place. So him don’t go down there couple weeks now, but I just go take up some sea water carry come for him to sap him knee and those things.”

While he eats heartily, Cameron also ensures that he gets adequate sleep by going to bed 8:00 each night for his nine-hour rest.

But the centenarian attributes his long life to one thing.

“Is because I give myself to the Lord and the Lord take care of me, that is why I live so long,” Cameron said.

“But I eat and drink my food man. I eat renta yam, St Vincent yam, yellow yam, and banana. Mi eat any kind of fowl. I don’t specialise when it come to meat,” he laughed. “I used to raise all kinds of animals, so I eat any meat.”

As Roy went to retrieve his father’s well-hidden ground hoe that Cameron said he received in 1931 from the Ministry of Agriculture, the elder was only too anxious to hold onto it and began digging up the weeds that had grown in the front yard — a task that it was evident he thoroughly enjoyed.