Stella's groove at 103

The matriach: Stella Bouville, 103, was born in Caparo but moved to Mayaro where she raised eight children. PHOTOS BY COREY CONNELY
The matriach: Stella Bouville, 103, was born in Caparo but moved to Mayaro where she raised eight children. PHOTOS BY COREY CONNELY

COREY CONNELLY

Her sight and hearing may not be as sharp as they once were. Nor is she able to cook or perform many of the household activities she did for much of her adult life. But in spite of these limitations, Stella Bouville, at age 103, is still going strong.

The feisty matriarch celebrated her birthday on Sunday with a simple reception at the Mayaro Civic Centre, which included her five surviving children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, relatives and friends. Bouville’s only surviving sibling, Violet Mc Millan, who turns 98 in August, also sat beside her sister during the function. Some of the attendees wore jerseys bearing an image of Bouville.

The event featured reminiscences, a talent show and tributes to an individual whom many described as a truly blessed Caribbean woman. Born in Caparo, central Trinidad, to a Martiniquan father and Tobagonian mother, on March 11, 1915, Bouville has lived a full life. She has spent much of her adulthood as a single parent, outlived three of her eight children and is proficient in at least two languages – patois and bhojpuri (one of the Bihari group of languages in western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh).

Love you: Stella Bouville gets a warm hug from a relative at last Sunday's celebration of her 103th birthday in Mayaro.

Once a fiercely independent woman, Bouville is now confined to a wheelchair. This, combined with the effects of a pacemaker, broken ankle and fractured hip have severely hampered her mobility over the years.

However, the centenarian has compensated for these setbacks by keeping abreast of the latest news on the newspapers and television and praying the Rosary daily.

She also attends mass regularly at Mayaro RC Church, a stone’s throw away from her home.

“I love the celebration today (last Sunday),” a smiling Bouville told Sunday Newsday after the reception. “But this is not half of my family. I have people in Tobago and Martinique.”

Asked about her secret to long life, Bouville credited her Maker and good food.

“Is God who gave the long life to me. What happening now is too much chemicals. Long time, we eh know about that.

“Yuh eating yuh dasheen. Yuh eating yuh cassava bread, ferine but now is only chemicals in everything yuh eating. The water and all have chemicals in it.”

Bouville said, though, she would not be celebrating a 104th birthday. “I going this year,” she opined after the reception. “One hundred and three is very good. But I have too much a pain for that. Meh hip break, Meh ankle break. Then I have a pacemaker. Is a clock I have in here, yuh know,” Bouville said, pointing to her chest.

It’s been her refrain ever since she turned 70, said Dr Claudius Fergus, one of her sons.

“She has been preparing for the afterlife for so long that some people probably have been collecting pensions since she started...It tells you of her independence,” said Fergus, who delivered an overview of his mother’s life. A retired senior lecturer in the Department of History, St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, Fergus told the gathering his mother was a bright child and tomboy in her early years.

“She boasted how she used to beat up on those boys, not girls. She did not fight girls.”

Later, she enjoyed a short stint as a monitor before taking a more lucrative job as a field worker in the cane fields of central Trinidad.

“The pay was so small that she left being a monitor, which was like a half-way house between a student and full-time teacher. In those days, they paid more money doing labouring work.”

While working in the cane fields, Bouville met her first love, Cyril London, with whom she had a son, Joe.

The union, though, was short-lived.

“I understand that after a proposal to marry, she turned it down and they went their own ways. He was kind of a wild fella and she did not want to enter into that kind of relationship,” Fergus said, eliciting chuckles from the gathering.

She then met Cecil Fergus, who hailed from Sangre Grande, in another corner of the country.

They lived together as husband and wife and had seven children. But after moving to Cecil’s hometown in 1950, the couple separated years later due to his infidelity. Bouville, Fergus learnt, also had a peculiar relationship with Cecil’s other love interests.

“Mama told me that she was not jealous of those people...She said she was friendly with a number of them and they were on speaking terms. It was a complex love relationship.”

Fergus added: “But at some point in time, there was a terrible conflict between them. I know the details but I won’t go into the details.”

Having gone their separate ways, Bouville built a new life in Mayaro, raising her children on her own.

“Cecil had his own life in Sangre Grande and she never bothered to put him in court for maintenance. She never asked him for anything and so she single-handedly took care of her children.”

Fergus recalled his mother worked at what was then known as the La Gondoux estate in south-east Trinidad for almost all of her working life. She also ran sou sous to support her children and improve her home.

Having to commute from Sangre Grande to Port of Spain to attend school in his youth, Fergus acknowledged his educational pursuits placed a financial burden on his mother – one which he never understood until he became an adult.

He said: “I always wondered how she did it because, to tell you the truth, I strained her financially more than anybody else. I was in Sangre Grande going to school in Port of Spain and she had to send money for me every week.”

Fergus recalled he used to meet a taxi driver named Bertie at a specific venue, a parlour, for the money.

Even now, Fergus said: “I would always go back to that parlour.

“Sometimes, I don’t go there to buy anything. I just go there because a part of my life is attached to that place.

“So, Mama, thanks for the sacrifices that you made and if anybody else suffered because of that, well I appreciate your suffering,” he joked.

The historian was proud of the fact that his mother, despite her age, was still in control of her wits and had a sharp tongue.

“She has a kind of cutting edge humour but was also one of the sternest persons bringing us up.”

All in the family: Stella Bouville celebrates her birthday with family and friends at the Mayaro Civic Centre.

Fergus also paid tribute to the family members who had cared for his mother over the years, including two of her sons, Andrew and Cornelius.

“Andrew makes sure she gets her meals on time and all of those details and Cornelius brings her the newspapers everyday.”

Bouville’s only surviving daughter, Jean Charles, and her husband, Ludrick, also continue to play a key role in their mother’s life, Fergus said.

“Without that love and care, I don’t think we would be here today celebrating.”

Bouville advised young people to “keep themselves quiet and obey their parents.”

“Parents now eh teaching their children nothing. But my children, I grow them up, they have to go to prayers and if I tell them to sit down there, they had to sit down there. And, if I tell them, get up, then they could get up.”

She said young people also should be kind to others, especially the elderly.

“Sometimes, I used to make about 14 sweetbread just to share with people. But now everybody is for theyself.”

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"Stella’s groove at 103"

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