Wen | echo documentary
Edit | echo documentary
Can you imagine a woman giving birth to 44 children? This is no joke.
A Ugandan mother, at the age of 39, gave birth to 44 children.
Because she has a strange ability to give birth to multiple births.
Even her husband was overwhelmed and chose to run away from home.
As a result, she has become a celebrity in the world, and is called "the richest woman in the world" by netizens around the world.
And this woman is very unfortunate, when she was a child, her stepmother wanted to poison her, and she escaped by chance, but her five brothers died tragically.
Later, at the age of 12, she was sold by her parents to a man who was 27 years older than her.
Her first child was a pair of twins, which made her very happy.
Then the second and third were twins again, until the fourth she gave birth to quadruplets.
In the days that followed, as long as she had a child, she must have been multiple, and she had been pregnant 15 times.
When he was last pregnant, he was not multiple, but just a child.
In all, she had 44 children.
This number is so staggering that it is hard for ordinary people to imagine.
How could a woman who was just forty years old give birth to so many children?
The Ugandan mother, Maryam, was born into an ordinary rural ugandan family.
Because her family was poor, when she was three years old, her mother was overwhelmed, abandoned them, and ran away from home.
After all, she was the sixth child in the family, and she had five older brothers on top of her.
So she and her five brothers can only live with their father.
But it was impossible for a man to earn money to support his family and take care of six children, so the father remarried.
After three months, the stepmother lived with them, and Mariam's family was finally complete again, and she and her brothers thought they would continue to enjoy their motherly love.
But she did not expect that her stepmother, but she was vicious and did not think of taking care of these poor children.
One day, the stepmother cooked a meal for them.
Looking at the hot meal, her brothers didn't think much about it and ate it.
Mariam's stomach was very uncomfortable at the time, and she had no appetite at all.
So she told her stepmother that she didn't want to eat, and then ran to a relative's house to play.
It was almost dark when Mariam came home.
But when she arrived at the door, she felt very confused in her heart.
Because the five brothers in the family are always noisy and noisy, but the family is very quiet that day.
However, Mariam was still young at that time, and without thinking much about it, he entered the house.
But she saw that the five brothers were lying on the ground, and each one of them had a very painful expression.
Mariam hurried over to her brothers, shaking them while asking them what had happened.
But the five brothers were cold and motionless.
So Mariam knew her brothers were dead, and she cried bitterly.
But she didn't know why five brothers had mysteriously died at the same time.
It turned out that the stepmother thought that she would have to have children in the future, so that the burden on the family was too heavy, and her life would fall into the depths of the water.
So she mixed shards of glass into the food and poisoned her five brothers.
Mariam, on the other hand, was lucky enough to escape the fate.
If she hadn't wanted to eat because of a stomachache, perhaps her fate would have been the same as her brothers.
"I was seven years old at the time, too young to even understand the true meaning of death," she said. It was relatives who told me what had happened. ”
But when his father returned home, he didn't say anything about his brothers' deaths.
Instead, Mariam was sent to her grandparents' house and raised by them.
However, the grandparents are old and frail, it is very difficult to take care of themselves, and they still have to raise Mariam, which is naturally even more inadequate.
So the grandparents made a decision to marry Mariam.
But Mariam was only 13 years old!
In many countries, Mariam's age can only be counted as a child, and she should be carefree and innocent.
She should sit in the classroom and study, and getting married should be something she needs to think about years from now.
But this is not the case in Uganda, where child marriage is a reality for many Ugandan girls.
According to UNICEF, 40% of women aged 20 to 24 get married before the age of 18 and 10% even before the age of 15, according to UNICEF statistics.
As a result, Uganda's child marriage rate is higher than the African average of 39%.
It is the most severe in northern Uganda, at 59 per cent. It was followed by 58% in the west and 52% in the east.
So where Mariam grew up, most poor families marry their daughters early.
This can not only reduce family expenses, but also exchange a little money to solve the family's difficulties.
And for this matter, his father did not have any objections, and very much agreed.
But Mariam, who was only 13 years old, couldn't understand why she had to marry.
So she strenuously opposed it.
But her opinion was of no use.
Because the whole family has already made a decision, she doesn't have any right to choose.
Afterwards, her grandparents told her the truth, and it turned out that when she was born, a man had already bought her.
How much does it cost? There are about 50,000 Ugandan shillings, about 94 yuan. Plus gave cattle and sheep.
So 13-year-old Mariam could only marry her husband.
Even looking back now, the expression on her face was very helpless and painful.
She put it this way: "When I was young, when I saw the cattle and sheep in the family, I thought that the family had bought them, but I did not expect that it was my dowry. And when my father arranged the marriage for me, I was disappointed in the world. ”
In her opinion, she had never been loved.
Even her stepmother didn't kill her because someone had already bought her.
But there are many, many girls like her in Uganda, and some are even more miserable than her.
After getting married, they suffer all kinds of beatings, contract very terrible diseases, and have no money to heal.
So no matter what Mariam thinks, she has to accept her fate and hope that her husband is a good man.
But life hit her once again, and her married life was miserable.
The husband was not a young lad, but an old man who was 27 years older than her.
This was older than her father.
And her husband's life style is chaotic, and he already has a lot of children.
When Mariam married, her husband continued to humiliate her and let her work day and night.
After all, in his opinion, Mariam was what he had bought, and that was his private property.
So he treated Mariam as he wanted.
In daily life, the violent husband will beat her at the first opportunity, even if she expresses the slightest dissatisfaction with her husband.
Such a day made Mariam very miserable.
Many times, she could no longer insist, and even came up with the idea of taking her own life.
But she still had to go on living, and she couldn't divorce her current husband.
Because even if she succeeds, she will continue to arrange the marriage at home.
"Getting married" is a fate she can hardly escape.
Mariam didn't want to live that life, by contrast, preferring to have children with only one man.
After Mariam had already given birth to 23 children, she felt that the family could not continue to support herself, and there were already too many children.
So when she had enough, she went to the doctor and asked if the doctor could do the operation so that she would no longer have children.
After the examination, the doctor told her that she had a rare genetic disease that would produce an unusually large number of eggs, so as long as she gave birth, she would be multiple.
And any surgery would endanger her health and longevity.
At Maryam's level of education, the doctor's words, she did not listen very clearly.
But she knew one thing, and that was that her children were only going to get more and more born.
The doctor also warned Mariam that if she continued to give birth, it would be life-threatening, and she might die in childbirth one day.
So in order not to have children again, the doctor prescribed contraceptive pills to her, but these drugs did not hurt her body.
Each time she took it, Mariam was in so much pain that she gave up on taking the medicine.
As a result of Mariam's actions, her husband became increasingly dissatisfied with her.
She is also reluctant to take care of her children, so her husband will often disappear for months, even years.
So her children basically grew up without a father.
And the husband is also intensifying, and when he returns, he has other women and children with him.
Mariam was even used as a maid, asking her to do laundry and cook for them.
For such humiliation, Mariam finally couldn't bear it, so she rejected her husband.
Unexpectedly, her husband sold everything and completely left her and the child.
Except for sometimes naming them over the phone, husbands are never involved in raising children.
Mariam's eldest son, 23, said: "I haven't seen my father since I was 13. ”
The husband walked so crisply, but Mariam could not abandon his children.
The amazing mother said: "I will continue to work hard to make sure my children always have food to eat. I will never abandon them, even though we endure the pain of survival every day.""
But she was homeless at the time.
When her grandparents learned of this, they asked Mariam to live in their home with the child.
After all, it is her own granddaughter, or heartache.
Mariam spent 21 years with her husband, who gave her only suffering and torture.
For her, this wedding has nothing to remember, only children, which are the gifts of Heaven to her.
In two decades, Mariam, who was only 38 years old, gave birth to 44 children.
There are 4 pairs of twins, 5 pairs of triplets and 5 pairs of quadruplets.
Only the last child gave birth to only one child.
Unfortunately, 6 of them are now dead, leaving only 38 children.
Fortunately, Mariam finally got the medical help she had been asking for.
Local doctors removed her uterus so mariam could no longer have children.
With so many children, the burden of life is unimaginable.
But the Ugandan 40-year-old mother is doing her best to provide a decent life for her children.
She does whatever odd jobs she can find in impoverished villages near Uganda's capital, Kampala.
Over the years, she collected local herbs to sell at the market, baking cakes, building walls on construction sites, selling scrap metal, doing hairdressing, and even helping decorate local activities.
"I grew up in tears and my man made me go through a lot of pain," she said. "All my time is spent taking care of my children and working to make money."
Today the family lives in four small houses made of cement bricks and corrugated iron roofs.
The youngest of 14 children slept in metal bunk beds and thin mattresses, which were the best conditions Mariam could offer.
Other children slept on mattresses on the floor or directly on the cold ground.
Poor families had nothing, and Mariam had no money to give more to her children.
Even the house is in tatters, and when it rains, it will keep leaking.
A family of dozens of people would hide in the only room that did not leak rain.
With so many children, food is one of the biggest expenses for this extended family.
They need 10 kg of corn or corn flour, 7 kg of legumes and 4 kg of sugar per day.
Mariam would cook the corn flour, which was the family's meal for the day.
For them, a meal of meat is the most delicious delicacy.
Despite this, the family is very united and fraternal, and everyone helps with cooking and cleaning.
There is also a wooden board on the wall that indicates everyone's daily chores.
It read: "On Saturday, we work together. ”
Although Mariam was poor and never went to school herself, the mother's greatest wish was for her children to go to school.
"I try to educate them and my dream is for my children to go to school," she said. They can be missing anything, but they have to go to school. ”
But Mariam could only think about it.
She alone, fed her own children, was exhausted.
So even though her eldest son, Kibka, had to drop out of school and return home to help Mariam raise his younger siblings.
Kibka put it this way: "Mom was overwhelmed, the work overwhelmed her, we did everything we could to help, like cooking and washing clothes, but she still bore the full burden of the family. ”
And another of his sons, Nabatanzi, recalls: "I started taking on adult responsibilities early on, and I think I haven't been happy since I was born. ”
And Mariam proudly hung a picture of her child's school graduation on the wall, which may be the mother's greatest comfort.
Of course, since this mother became famous, many people have also begun to pay attention to her family and help her.
I also hope that this difficult mother can see all her children grow up healthy and she can also take a rest.
In addition, Maryam's story reflects some of Uganda's real problems, which cannot be ignored.
And she's showing people what the word "responsibility" is.