Musa Hasahya Kasera has so many children he can’t remember most of their names.

The Ugandan villager is struggling to provide for his vast family that he says includes 12 wives, 102 children and 578 grandchildren, and now feels enough is enough.

“At first it was a joke… but now this has its problems,” the 68-year-old told AFP at his homestead in the village of Bugisa in Butaleja district, a remote rural area of eastern Uganda.

“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, clothing.”

Hasahya, who is currently unemployed but has become something of a tourist attraction in his village, said his wives now take birth control to stop the family expanding further.

“My wives are on contraceptives but I am not. I don’t expect to have more children because I have learnt from my irresponsible act of producing so many children that I can’t look after.”

Hasahya’s brood lives largely in a rapidly dilapidating house, its corrugated iron roof rusting away, or in about two dozen grass-thatched mud huts nearby.

He married his first wife in 1972 at a traditional ceremony when they were both about 17 and his first child Sandra Nabwire was born a year later.

“Because we were born only two of us, I was advised by my brother, relatives and friends to marry many wives to produce many children to expand our family heritage,” Hasahya said.

– No fighting –

Attracted by his then status as a cattle trader and butcher, Hasahya said villagers would offer their daughters’ hand in marriage, even some below the age of 18.

Child marriage was only banned in Uganda in 1995, while polygamy is allowed in the East African country according to certain religious traditions.

Hasahya’s 102 children range in age from 10 to 50, while the youngest wife is aged about 35.

“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.