“At first it was a joke (…) but now it’s problems,” says Musa Hasahya Kesera, a Ugandan father of 102 children who admits that it is getting harder every day to meet their needs or even remember their names.
At 68 years old, he heads a family of 12 women, 102 children -the youngest under 10 and the oldest over 50- and 578 grandchildren.
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He has become quite the attraction in his village, Bugisa, in eastern Uganda. But he assures that she wants to stop and not have any more children.
“I have already learned (the lesson) from my irresponsible attitude, from having had so many children that I cannot take care of,” he confesses.
his big family lives in a very dilapidated house with a tin roof and about twenty adobe cabins located nearby.
“With my weak health and less than one hectare of land for such a large family, two of my wives have left because I could not provide for them with the most essential things, such as food, education or clothing,” says the father of the family. , unemployed.
To prevent the family from growing further, their wives take contraceptives. He doesn’t take care of himself, she says.
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a life of polygamy
Polygamy is authorized in Uganda. Musa Hasahya Kesera was married for the first time in 1972, when he was 17 years old, through a traditional ceremony. Their first child was born a year later.
“As we were only two children (in his family), my brother, my parents and my friends advised me to marry several women to have many children and increase our family wealth,” he explains.
It is their mothers who help me identify them
Lured by his status as a cattle dealer and butcher, several locals offered him the hand of their daughters, some of them still minor (a practice prohibited since 1995).
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Over the years, he can no longer even identify his own children. “I only remember the names of the first born and the lastI don’t remember most of the others,” he confesses, combing through stacks of old notebooks for details about their births.
“It is their mothers who help me identify them,” he says.
The man admits that he also has a hard time remembering the names of some of his wives. He has to ask one of his sons, Shaban Magino, a 30-year-old teacher, to help manage the family affairs. He is one of their few children who went to school.
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To resolve disputes, which are not lacking in the family, a meeting is organized every month.
a daily meal
The people of Bugisa live largely from agriculture, with small crops of rice, cassava and coffee, and livestock.
In the family of Musa Hasahya Kesera, some try to earn money or food doing chores for their neighbors or spending the day looking for firewood and water, often having to walk long distances. Others stay at home.
The women weave mats or braid their hair, while the men play cards in the shade of a tree.
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When lunch is ready – most of the time, boiled cassava – the father of the family leaves his hut and she calls out to her relatives to get in line to eat.
“But we hardly have enough food. We are obliged to feed the children once, or twice on good days,” explains Zabina, the third wife of Musa Hasahya Kesera, who She claims that she would never have married if she had known that her husband had other wives.
“He brought the fourth, then the fifth, and so on until he got to twelve,” he says, sighing. Only seven still live with him in Bugisa.
Two left and three went to another town, two kilometers away, because what the family farm provides is not enough for everyone to eat.
AFP
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