Belize City woman celebrates 102nd birthday

For some people, a birthday is just another day, but even those naysayers can agree that surviving one hundred and two years on earth is cause for celebration.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
For more than a decade, every Friday Isabel Garbutt has been coming to the Helpage Centre for religious devotion. But this week’s gathering was extra special as the staff and her friends decided to throw Garbutt a party to celebrate her one hundred and second birthday!

Sharon Pollack, Executive Director, Helpage Belize
“We got quite a few donations from the community, flowers, her cake, and we are doing all the food and just celebrating it. We’ll have a party as soon as the devotions are over.”

Isabel Garbutt, Celebrating 102nd Birthday
“I am feeling great. I am not sleeping too well, but seeing all my loved ones, all my beautiful families and loved ones, I sort of feel refresh, you know, it’s like a good dose of medicine seeing so many of my people. Oh yes, God is good and great. He’s a wonderful God. I am very, very happy today to be here.”

Kendra Griffith
“Did you ever think that you would live to see a hundred and two?”

Isabel Garbutt
“Oh, sometimes I forget I am that much.” (Laughs)

It seems longevity runs in the family. Garbutt says her father lived to see ninety-nine.

Isabel Garbutt
“I didn’t make it alone and I wasn’t forgotten, so you know why, the great man was with me, he made me, he mould me, he keep on guiding me for today.”

And Garbutt isn’t letting her age slow her down.

Isabel Garbutt
“Sometimes I noh feel it. No, I get up and I wash. Day before I wash, oh yes, and I cook too, oh.”

Kendra Griffith
“So you have children?”

Isabel Garbutt
“One and she died. But I have twenty-five children that I raise.”

Gloria Westby is one of those children.

Gloria Westby, Raised by Garbutt
“I lived at Mrs. Bel for fourteen years, all my children pass through her, she help me with them.”

Kendra Griffith
“What can you tell us about her?”

Gloria Westby, Raised by Garbutt
“She is very kind, I have lot of family here in Belize, but nobody look on my like she. … I very happy for Ms. Bel. If ever something happens to her, I noh know what I will do because I take her like a mother.”

Isabel Garbutt
“I tell you Belize, it’s a wonderful way to live to this age, but when you think of it, it’s the way you live it, the way you live your life.”

Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

Garbutt’s actual birthday is on Sunday and her family has plans to throw her another party to commemorate the event.