Musa Hasahya Kasera lives in a remote rural area of eastern Uganda. He is 67 years old, a farmer by trade, and the father of 102 children.
He has so many children he can’t remember most of their names.
Hasahya married his first wife, Hanifa, in 1971 when he was 16 years old. He dropped out of school, started a business, acquired land, and decided to expand his family. Then he expanded it some more. Then considerably more after that. Over the following decades, he took on 12 wives in total, all living together under the same roof. His reasoning for the arrangement was straightforward: it made it easier to monitor them and stop them from leaving.
His oldest child is 51, roughly 20 years older than his youngest wife. His youngest child is 6. Between those two bookends are 100 more children, spread across generations, many of whom Hasahya struggles to keep track of.
He also has 568 grandchildren.
For years the family survived on his farming income, but as the children multiplied and his health declined, the finances collapsed. Two of his wives left because he couldn’t afford food, clothing, or school fees. A third of his children live with him on his two-acre plot of land in a dilapidated house with a corrugated iron roof. The rest are scattered across the region.
He has now asked his remaining wives to go on contraception.
“My income has become lower and lower over the years due to the rising cost of living and my family has become bigger and bigger,” he said. “I have learned from my irresponsible act of producing so many children who I can’t look after.”
His youngest wife Zulaika, who has 11 of the 102 children herself, confirmed she had stopped. “I’ve seen the bad financial situation and am now taking the birth control pill.”
Musa Hasahya has become something of a local tourist attraction.
This Ugandan Farmer Has 102 Children and 568 Grandchildren
