A 94-year-old father of over 100 children, Nulu Ssemakula, recently expanded his household by marrying four new wives in Ruyonza, a largely polygamous village in Uganda.
Ssemakula has been successful in expanding his family boasting of more than 19 wives with whom he has had more than 100 children and is still counting. His youngest child is 10 months old now and the youngest wife, who is 24 years old is pregnant. He currently lives with 66 of his young children. While some of his children have grandchildren, the 94-year-old says he still hopes to have more children and even marry more women.
Ssemakula married his first wife in 1952, who was soon joined by five others. They still live together.
“I unfortunately lost four of my wives while others who needed more than I could afford, I let them go. But they left me with children; I will still marry more if I still have more years and even have more children. In children and wives, is where I find my pleasure. That is my true wealth,”Ssemakula says.
According to Daily Monitor, Ssemakula has set up a mosque and a primary school (Kiyombero Primary School), a coffee huller and a dairy milk cooling machine in the village to cater for his family. Surrounded by the homes of his children and grandchildren, Ssemakula’s home is a relatively huge house with red ironsheets. The house is accessed by only one entry where the old man is often seated on a bench as he watches over his “empire”.
It is a typical agricultural homestead and the family provides the much needed manpower for the vast coffee plantation.
