'Tortoise urine can make one live longer'

...as a Silobela centurion divulges his secret of living a long life

Sekuru Johannes Gumbo who will be turning 101 years this year in October has his small trick for living long.  This trick was a closely guarded secret by him and it is clear that he had no intention of telling anyone up to his death bed. But as fate would have it, when the Jairos Jiri Silobela Centre was preparing for a visit by some well-wishers, the closely guarded secret was to be revealed.

Sekuru Johannes’ room at the Centre is not that tidy and on this day the Jairos Centre Manager, Mrs. Agnes Mapako wanted to see all the rooms sparkling clean and she decided to go it alone in this old man’s room. And there the secret stared her in the face.

“As I was cleaning, I saw a round tin with a lid and inside it contained a very common creature - a tortoise. The tin had sand in it and some food which I suspect had been meant for its feeding. I was shocked by what I saw to the extent that I had to scream. 

"I had never seen such a thing in my entire life. I thought it could be harmful to other occupants. I then quizzed the old man about this tortoise,” she said.

Mrs. Mapako said Sekuru Johannes described it as his pet. Just like others liked cats and dogs, Sekuru Johannes wanted a tortoise as his own pet.

“I further quizzed him and threatened him that I would evict him if he did not disclose why he kept it. That is when the old man let go of his secret. He told me that to live longer, you drink the urine of the animal,” said Mrs. Mapako.

My colleague and I had to arrange another day to have an exclusive interview with Sekuru Johannes to get an insight on his way of life which seemed so weird.

As we planned for the journey, Mrs Mapako hinted that Sekuru Johannes is a very secretive man and does not want to release information to strangers easily. He referred to them as ‘foreigners’.

The day before we arrived at the centre, Mrs. Mapako appraised us that Sekuru Johannes had gotten angry when she had told him that there were people who were coming to talk to him. She said he told her that she must learn to keep quiet if she happens to see something in life.

We pondered on this because we would not return to Harare without pinning Sekuru Johannes to an exclusive interview. The newsmen had to be innovative. We had to find out what Sekuru Johannes liked.

The news crew later learnt that Sekuru Johannes liked drinks, cream biscuits, and snuff. These, we bought at Loreto Shopping Centre on our way to meet our target.

The first person we met on arrival was Sekuru Johannes himself and he ran to meet us and gave us warm hugs. He had remembered us from our previous visit at the end of January this year. At least we were no longer aliens to the old man and we had a breakthrough.

Mrs. Mapako was to take us to Sekuru Johannes for the proper interview but first we had to give him our small parcel. That was the tonic that we needed to manage to pin him down. Yes, Sekuru Johannes agreed to talk to us but remained unfathomable and hesitant.

Sekuru Johannes does not speak clearly and cannot make a complete sentence but with the assistance of Mrs. Mapako, we were able to talk to him.

He revealed that drinking tortoise urine indeed makes one live longer but he has no explanation as to how that happens. He also confesses he used to have a tortoise that he kept but said he had let it go after Mrs. Mapako saw it.

But something in us told us he still has the creature.

Asked how many times one has to take the urine, Sekuru Johannes said that only once was enough. He says he had taken it when he was still a young boy. This was however conflicting statements with the information that he had told Mrs. Mapako.

To Mrs. Mapako, the old man had indicated that he collects parts of the sand where the tortoise will have urinated and mixes that with water and drinks it occasionally. 

As a way of trying to make him take us to his room where we would take images of the creature, we insisted that we wanted also to drink the tortoise urine so that we also live long. Sekuru Johannes was evasive saying that he will have to hunt for one and inform the centre manager to contact us.

“But Sekuru please give us some tortoise urine,” we ask. “Tiri vazukuru venyu vanoda kudzidza uye kurarama sezvamaita chingotipaiwo tinwewo,” we plead.

“Ndichatsvaga ndikaiwana ndokudaidzai,” assures Sekuru Johannes.

We later went to his room but he would not let us in. He led the way but blocked us from entering. A hasty glance into the room we saw a hodgepodge of wares loll haphazardly in the room but we wouldn’t know where the creature stayed.

Though we could not get him into showing us his secret possession, we learnt a lot from our interface with Sekuru Johannes as he showed his cosmic familiarity on a variety of issues and nature which can help people in their lives. As he narrates the information he tells us to take some notes down promising us to give us more on our return.

According to the information we got from the centre, Sekuru Johannes was born on the 13^th of October 1913 and has been at the Silobela Old People’s Home since 1972. He came at the home deaf and dumb though he is capable of hearing now. According to people interviewed at this centre, Sekuru Johannes had confided in them that he had treated himself of dumbness after pouring animal fat drawn from a monitor lizard aka Mupurwa in Shona or uXamu in IsiNdebele in his ears.

That’s the life of Sekuru Johannes who today is still as fit as a fiddle. He does not look like a centurion. He has not lost his boyish gait and still has his teeth save for two front ones. He can walk unaided and can go to the grinding mill seven kilometres away with buckets of maize meal.

Sekuru Johannes is a known figure at Loreto Shopping Centre as he occasionally frequents some joints at the centre in search of his opaque beer.

 “We know Sekuru Johannes very well and he is also a regular here,” said one Alick Meki an artisanal miner who became a friend with the newsmen at Bravolands Complex.

The other side of Sekuru is that he is in love with bush life and spends his time in the bush where he goes hunting and brings at the home a lot of stuff from the bush for his consumption. He sometimes goes to catch fish at a nearby river which he shares with others or at times picks a variety of mushrooms.

Sekuru Johannes is the current head of the home (Sabhuku) and Mrs. Mapako describes him as someone who is not selfish and gives constructive advice to others.

He was born in Ngaone in Chipinge District of Manicaland Province but there is no information on how he got there.

Tortoises are considered the longest-living vertebrates on Earth. One of their oldest known representatives was Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise that died of heart failure at the age of 175 years in June 2006 at a zoo owned by the late Steve Irwin. Harriet was considered the last living representative of Darwin’s epic voyage on the HMS Beagle. An Aldabra giant tortoise named Adwaita died at the rumored age of 250 in March 2006, according to www.mnn.com.

So when you want to be a centurion, why don’t you try tortoise urine?