You would think that at 115, Margaret Dowarka would have a special diet that is rigidly followed. Quite the contrary. The supercentenarian still enjoys cake, sweetened drinks and even cornflakes.

“She tell me seh this nuh taste good and she nuh want the porridge, how she want bread, an she a lick we pon we han a tell we seh she want roast breadfruit,” her granddaughter, Beverly James told the

Jamaica Observer when the newspaper visited the centenarian on Friday.

“This morning a cornflakes and milk she drink. She drink Complan, Ensure; she eat crushed Irish [potato], pumpkin, soup and so,” she added.

Dowarka was born on April 1, 1902 and celebrated her birthday last Saturday with relatives who were witnesses to yet another cake-cutting hurrah.

She is the only living sibling of her parents’ six children. The supercentenarian and mother of 13 has also outlived four of her children and her husband. Up to last year she was listed as the second-oldest person in Jamaica, behind a woman in Trelawny whose age was given at 117.

“The richest one, gunman kill him in Kingston; the other one get into crash; my mom died overseas, a vehicle killed her; one died of cancer, the first one and he would be 90-odd year old now,” James stated.

Originally from Green Castle in St Mary, Dowarka now resides in the quiet community of Belfield Pen, also in the parish.

Her contribution to the community is unforgetable according to James, her caregiver.

“She usually cook and nuff little children love her because all when holiday time, she used to cook nuff fish, dal, rice, curry, kill nuff chicken and give weh to whole heap a children and people,” James recounted.

“She used to treat we very nice when we small. all when grandpa would a quarrel, she nuh love di quarrel, she hide the food and give we,” she continued.

“She is a good lady man; she nuh put up with foolishness,” the granddaughter added.

Annecia Collins, her great- granddaughter, said Dowarka maintains her fiery spunk, despite her age.

“She facety. All when she up a hospital, she a box off di nurse dem hand she nuh want dem touch her. A one facety woman dis though,” her great granddaughter said jokingly, after Dowarka flashed her hand at her.

The strong-willed centenarian, who no longer walks, has not been deterred by her frailty and often hopes to maintain her independence.

“She will say she want go to the bathroom but she cannot walk go to the bathroom herself, even though her son make one (bathroom) near her room. So we put the pampers on her and she will still say she want go the bathroom,” James said of her insistent grandmother.

“She nuh hear properly, but she can see we likkle. She nuh have no sickness in her body, she just have to lay down. She will [sometimes] get pneumonia and we had to take her to the hospital di other day. The other day she did sick bad wid pneumonia but she nuh too bad now,” said James.

Dowarka in her youth was a jack of all trades. According to her granddaughter, she worked as a vendor, seamstress.

“She say in her younger days she used to sell fish an she used to do sewing on her little machine. She used to sew flannel, her clothes, and she used to sew clothes for me,” James told the

Sunday Observer. “She walk round an sell fish on her head. She say she…go places go bill grass an dem something deh too.”

She also stood by the principle of not being one to follow the crowd.

“She always talk say dem used to play like hide-and-seek wid him fren, dem round di place. But she say she neva really keep no fren. She say she nuh want no fren when she go a river she swim by herself. She say she neva like fren, she nuh keep no whole heap a fren fren,” James recalled of her many conversations with her grandmother.

A woman of Indian decent, Dowarka married James Dowarka, a short Indian man who came to Jamaica to work as a supervisor on a sugar estate. She said he died when Hurricane Gilbert rocked Jamaica on September 12, 1988.