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Man with over 100 kids now has his 12 wives on birth control pills

'I was advised by my brother, relatives, and friends to marry many wives to produce many children to expand our family heritage,' 68-year-old Musa Hasahya Kasera said.

June 06, 2023 / 16:20 IST
'The challenge is I can only remember the name of my first and the last born but some of the children I can't recall their names,' Musa Hasahya Kasera said.

After having 102 kids and 578 grandchildren, a man from Uganda has admitted to being irresponsible for producing so many children whom he can't look after. Ugandan villager Musa Hasahya Kasera said he does not even remember most of their names. But while the 68-year-old now feels that enough is enough, he does not use contraception. Instead, his 12 wives are now on birth control pills.

"At first it was a joke..." Kasera told news agency AFP referring to his number of offspring. "But now this has its problems. With my health failing and merely two acres of land for such a huge family, two of my wives left because I could not afford the basics like food, education, and clothing."

"My wives are on contraceptives but I am not. I don't expect to have more children because I have learned from my irresponsible act of producing so many children that I can't look after," Kasera, who is currently unemployed but has become something of a tourist attraction in his village Bugisa, said.

Polygamy is legal in Uganda -- a country with one of the highest birth rates in the world, with only 50 percent of women getting access to modern birth control, according to the UN.

Recounting his first marriage, Kasera said it happened in 1972 with a traditional ceremony when they were both about 17 and his first child Sandra Nabwire was born a year later. "I was advised by my brother, relatives, and friends to marry many wives to produce many children to expand our family heritage," Kasera said.

"The challenge is I can only remember the name of my first and the last born but some of the children I can't recall their names," he said as he rummaged through piles of old notebooks looking for details about their births. "It's the mothers who help me to identify them."

But sometimes, Kasera can't even recall the names of some of his wives and has to consult one of his sons, Shaban Magino, a 30-year-old primary school teacher who helps run the family's affairs and is one of the few to have received an education.

A local official who oversees the village of about 4,000 people, said that despite the challenges, Kasera has "brought up his children very well" and there had been no cases of theft or fighting for example.

(With inputs from AFP)

Read more: Saudi man marries 53 times in pursuit of ‘stability’

first published: Jun 6, 2023 04:13 pm

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