/ 17 February 1999

‘170-YEAR-OLD WOMAN FOUND’

AN Italian anthropologist claims to have found a woman of “at least” 150 and possibly as old as 170 living in central Kenya. The woman, named Wangui, belongs to the Kikuyu tribe and lives in a straw hut in a village about 30km from Nairobi, according to Professor Giovanni Perrucci of the University of Chieti. Wangui is blind, spends all her time in prayer and never lies down, Perrucci said. Although there are no documents to prove her age, the academic says it can be traced back approximately in terms of generations and through stories passed down, since her descendants are all alive.