The world’s oldest person, Koku Istambulova, will turn 129 on 1st June. Koku Istambulova, from Chechnya, Russia, is the world’s oldest person alive. She is 128 years old and is going to turn 129 on 1st June. The claim is made by the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation and is based on her internal passport which shows her date of birth as June 1, 1889.
Her birth date of June 1, 1889, was apparently confirmed by the Russian government on her passport but it’s still hard to believe considering that the oldest person ever documented was 122.
Is Koku Happy With Her Long Life?
Possibly being a record breaker Koku Istambulova, is not too happy with her life. She says she hasn’t lived a single happy day in her life.
Ms Istambulova claimed she survived through the Russian Civil War (after the Bolshevik revolution), the Second World War and two Chechen wars. This means she was 55 when World War 2 ended. And 102 when the Soviet Union collapsed a generation ago.
Koku and her family were deported in 1944 after the World War 2 along with the whole Chechen village to Kazakhstan and Siberia by Stalin who accused them of Nazi collaboration.
During the war she recalls scary Nazi tanks passing her family home. Koku said “I survived through the (Russian) Civil War (after the Bolshevik revolution), the Second World War, the deportation of our nation in 1944 and through two Chechen wars. “And now I am sure that my life was not a happy one. “I remember tanks with Germans passing our house. It was scary. “But I tried not to show this, we were hiding in the house.”
She said adding: “When in exile – we lived in Siberia too – but in Kazakhstan we felt how the Kazakhs hated us.
‘Every Day I Dreamed Of Going Back Home.’
Koku’s daughter Tamara died five years ago. She was her only surviving daughter who lived until she was 104. Koku does not speak about her family much but she has lost several children, including a son aged 6 years.
She can walk and cook for herself and can take care of her self but her eyesight is getting weak.
When asked how she lived so long, Koku, told an interviewer: “It was God’s will. I did nothing to make it happen. “She says that she sees people going in for sports, eating something special, keeping themselves fit, but she has no idea how she lived this long. Koku added: “I have not had a single happy day in my life, I’ve always worked hard, digging in the garden.”
“Long life is not at all God’s gift for me – but a punishment.”
She finds her happiness when she is sitting in her favorite place which is outside her house in the summer. But all these claims, including Koku’s, are impossible to verify because of the lack of reliable birth or early childhood written records.
The current oldest person in the world is 117-year-old Chiyo Miyako, from Japan. The oldest documented person was Jeanne Calment, from France, who lived 122 years, 164 days, dying in 1997. Although Koku says she is unhappy, other older people in the world are breaking records as a milestone.
