A Kenyan man who has married 130 women in 65 years says that ”dictatorship and hard work” is required to make a polygamous family happy and productive.
Eighty-five-year-old Ancentus Akuku, also known as ”Danger”, lives in Homa Bay on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya.
He belongs to the Luo ethnic group, which permits polygamy.
Among his local community, he is revered as a hero and an icon of Luo cultural practices.
”I have never failed to win a woman’s heart. I know what to tell them and make them laugh. I know how to draw them closer. This has been my art,” he told the local Standard newspaper in an interview.
Akuku is described as a majestic man, standing seven feet tall and wearing khaki shorts, knee-high socks, a white shirt, a tie and a Stetson hat.
He married his first wife, Dinah, in 1939. His most recent wife, Auma, was just more than 20 years old when they married in 1999.
”I was not forced into the marriage. I was charmed by his smartness and love. I also found him to be more reasonable than most of the young men of today,” said Auma, who now has two children with ”Danger”.
Akuku says it was never his intention to become a polygamist.
”But I was stung by the marriage bug and have had no choice but to perpetuate the practice.”
While Akuku may, as he himself claims, hold the Kenyan record for number of wives married, he also holds the record in divorces.
He says he has parted ways with 85 wives over the years. Some of them he threw out because they had been unfaithful, he says.
He prides himself on being a strict family planner, having no more than four children with each wife. He only educated the first-born of every wife, and it was the responsibility of the oldest siblings to sponsor the education of their younger sisters and brothers.
Akuku even built a primary school in the early 1980s to cater for all his children.
”I am happy because I have doctors, lawyers, teachers and pilots in my home. This is my greatest achievement, my source of joy.”
The ”Danger” of Homa Bay would not disclose whether he plans any more weddings. — Sapa-DPA