A Toast to the Fountain of Youth

By Jane Armstrong, theglobeandmail.com

July 2, 2008

Georgia

A daily shot of vodka and the love of family and friends keep the 'long-livers' of Dzhgerda, Georgia, going strong past the age of 90. 

Stepan Jinjolia has outlived three wives, one son and a grandson. He was a schoolboy when the Bolsheviks took control of Russia in 1917. At 12, he was sent to work on a Soviet collective farm where he picked tobacco for 70 years. Now 98, he still drinks a shot of homemade vodka every morning.
His neighbour down the road, Luyba Ashuba, is a little older.

Ms. Ashuba was widowed 66 years ago when her husband was killed on the battlefield on the Russian front in Ukraine during the Second World War. But her five surviving children, six grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and two-year-old great-great-granddaughter bring her joy. At age 99, she says this is the best era in which to be alive.

There are 16 other men and women over the age of 90 in Dzhgerda, a sleepy village of 820 souls. They are called "long-livers" in this lush ribbon of land tucked between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea.

Over the years, scientists from the United States, Ukraine and Russia have travelled to Dzhgerda and a handful of other mountain villages to find out why the rural inhabitants of Abkhazia - a tiny, breakaway republic of Georgia - live so long.

Anatoly Yamskov, who took part in a four-year, Soviet-American study in late 1970s, concluded that one reason is that the old people of Abkhazia are treated like royalty.

"In Abkhazia, people tend to think that the old are clever and more influential," said Mr. Yamskov, an associate professor of ethnology and anthropology at Moscow's Russian Academy of Sciences.

People seek their advice, consult them in village affairs and rarely leave them alone, Mr. Yamskov said. "It's the exact opposite of modern life."

Life in Dzhgerda is anything but modern. Cows, chickens and dogs have the right-of-way on the gutted gravel road that connects a string of family-run subsistence farms along a green slope of mountain. The era of computers, the Internet and indoor plumbing has forgotten Dzhgerda.

Despite the primitive living conditions, the rural Abkhazians in Dzhgerda live well. Fruits and vegetables grow fast and furiously in the subtropical climate of blue skies, mild winters and sea air.

The snail's pace of life is another factor Mr. Yamskov cited in his research into longevity in Abkhazia. During the Soviet era, many inhabitants of the southern Caucuses continued to engage in commercial activities despite the Soviet ban, except the Abkhazians. What were they doing with nature's bounty? Just consuming it, Mr. Yamskov said.

"Money does not mean a lot to them," he said. "They are not working for material gain. They can produce a lot for themselves at any time."

Every morning, after his vodka, Mr. Jinjolia's bent frame can be seen pacing the grounds of his sprawling three-hectare garden, occasionally leaning on his walking stick for support. His son and grandson are buried under a canopy farther up the mountain and Mr. Jinjolia still climbs the slope to sit at their graves.

His face is wizened now and his voice is a high-pitched whine, but Mr. Jinjolia's brown, darting eyes are clear. It's also clear that he rules the roost in the family home. At a late-afternoon lunch earlier, his family and neighbours stood in respect while he toasted guests.

They didn't touch their glasses until Mr. Jinjolia finished speaking from the head of the table.

Why has he lived so long? "I don't know," he shrugged. "All my life I've drunk and smoked and chased girls," he said, laughing.

But most of his life was just hard. He said he doesn't remember much about the Bolshevik Revolution, but he does remember the hard years that followed, when he was put to work at age 12 on a collective farm. "I was too young to go to work," he said.

When the Second World War erupted, Mr. Jinjolia was sent to the Russian front twice and was shot on both tours of duty. His two convalescences were the only periods in his life when he was hospitalized.

Once, in 1930, he says, he contracted malaria, but he drank some vodka and recovered. His first marriage ended in divorce, his second wife died and his third wife passed away 20 years ago.

He wanted to marry one more time, but was afraid he would outlive her too.

Ms. Ashuba's long life was also marked by the great social upheavals of the 20th century. She too picked tobacco for decades on a collective farm. After her husband was killed in the war, Ms. Ashuba raised six children on her own. Her salary from the collective farm was paid in food, not money.

"Each year, I prepared one tonne and 300 kilograms of tobacco and each month I got a few pieces of soap, corn and sugar," she said.

Ms. Ashuba said her life improved after the Soviet Union's collapse even though the breakup brought more war and unrest to the Caucuses.

"Life here in Abkhazia is better," she said, during an interview beneath a cherry tree on her family's gated compound. "When I was young, I had to work all the time. I would work until I collapsed."

As she spoke, her 76-year-old son Ilia and 68-year-old daughter, Eteri, hovered nearby, periodically bringing coffee, cheese and vodka.

A neighbour, Natella Shlarba, said Abkhazians feel a moral duty to care for their elders. "We don't have [seniors' homes]. If you don't take care of your parents, no one will say hello to you on the street. All this love that is given to people makes them live longer."

Despite the reams of local folklore and ample anecdotal evidence, Abkhazia's reputation as the perfect breeding ground for long life might be more myth than fact, the spell broken by a brutal civil war in the early 1990s and new research that has discredited earlier findings.

Mr. Yamskov was part of the Soviet-American study group that travelled to Abkhazia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They interviewed dozens of people over the age of 90 and studied their diet and living conditions and conducted physical examinations on the old.

The researchers also looked at a Scottish-Irish community of old people living in rural northeastern Kentucky.

The study concluded that Abkhazians had the highest proportion of people over the age of 90 in the Soviet Union. Looking at people over the age of 50, researchers found there were 102 people per 100,000 over the age of 90 in Abkhazia, compared with 13 per 100,000 in the rest of the Soviet Union.

However, subsequent researchers have said that the ages of the very old Abkhazians interviewed could not be verified because they couldn't produce reliable documents.

But Mr. Yamskov defended his findings. The old people interviewed in the late 1970s were born in the 1880s, during a period when thousands of Abkhazians were migrating to Turkey. Accurate birth records couldn't be found but individuals were asked a series of questions about the great events of the era. A huge snow storm struck the region in 1911 and the old were asked to recall what they were doing during the blizzard.

Mr. Yamskov returned to Abkhazia in 2003 for a follow-up study, but by then the 1992-93 civil war and years of international economic isolation had taken their toll on the life expectancies of Abkhazians.

Today, accurate statistics are extremely hard to come by in this republic that calls itself a country, yet is recognized as such by no one. A government official asserts there are 632 people over the age of 90 and 64 people over age 100 among a population of 260,000. Yet, international bodies have doubted previous population estimates cited by Abkhazian officials. The United Nations plans to conduct a census here in 2011.

For all the doubters, there is always Galina Kharaziya, whose Soviet passport states she was born 103 years ago.

She remembers being yanked out of elementary school during the First World War to teach youngsters because all the adults were involved in the war effort. She also remembers the Stalin years when countless friends disappeared. Her second husband spent 17 years in a prison camp.

Ms. Kharaziya's two children are in their 60s and 70s and she too is slowing down, her breath laboured and her eyesight nearly gone. She gave up her morning vodka years ago. All her friends and contemporaries have died and she sometimes gets depressed.

When asked what makes her happy, she brightened. "I'm very happy being here," she said gesturing to her gathered family and friends, her son Grigori, 67, seated at her side, holding her hand.

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