She had five sets of twins

Joyce Nakanjjako has had five sets of twins and five other single births. Sarah Tumwebaze spoke to her about how she has been able to raise all her 15 children.

Every young woman dreams of the number of children she wants to have. Many these days will tell that they would like to have three. That was Ms Joyce Nakanjjako dream too. She wanted to have two girls and one boy.

The first time she conceived though, she had twins and both were boys. Although she had never dreamed of having twins, she was happy that she was at least able to have children. Her husband Joseph Nsubuga was also happy that he had become a Ssalongo. “What surprises me most is that when I gave birth, my husband stopped me from breastfeeding the babies and said that if I did, I would easily grow old.”
By that time, they were staying in Lugazi and the husband was a petroleum jelly vendor, a job he had until he passed away in 2002. From this job, Nsubuga was able to buy milk for the twins every day. Nakanjjako says that since she was not breastfeeding, it was easy for her to conceive and by the time the twins were celebrating their first birthday, she had already conceived another set of twins.

This scared her a lot.
“This time I was very worried and I even thought that my husband was going to throw me out of his home because I had never heard of anyone who bore more than one pair of twins. However, he was very supportive and happy.”

After the birth of the second pair of twins, Nsubuga found it very hard to fend for the whole family alongside paying rent. So he suggested that they move to his home town in Mpigi district at Nsangi in a village called Maya. Nakanjjako says that she was happy with the suggestion because there, she would get a piece of land on which she would till and grow food for her family.

However, no sooner had the second set of twins made one year than she learnt that she had conceived another pair. “At this point I was horrified. Three sets of twins was abnormal. But while I was lamenting, my husband was jubilating because he had gone beyond being a Ssalongo and people around the area were calling him Ssabalongo (a father of more than one set of twins).”

Nsubuga even started saving money to buy a cow from which they would get milk for the babies and within six months, they had a cow at home. Nakanjjako says that when the third set of twins was born, she was given a piece of land which was one and a half miles from her house on which to till. “Every morning I would wake up and prepare the two older pairs of twins for school. After they left, I would peel food for lunch, put it on the fire then leave for the garden with the third pair. I would carry one on my back and the other one at the front, then carry the hoe, their milk and some of their beddings on my head,” Nakanjjako explains.

In the garden, she would lay their beddings under a shade and leave them to sleep and would keep on checking on them. Whenever they woke up, she would feed and put them back to sleep. She would then stay in the garden up to noon then set off for home to be in time to serve the other twins lunch when they got back from school. By the time the third set of twins started talking, Joyce had conceived for the fourth time. However, it was a single child. “I was a bit relieved because it’s very hectic to take care of twins since in most cases when one cries, the other one will also cry.” When this baby was born, Nakanjjako still had to go with it and the twins to the field because she had no maid to take care of them.

After giving birth to her seventh child, she realised that she was fed up of having a child every year so she decided to try local family planning methods but even these failed because by the following year, she had conceived another set of twins.

At this point, she had gotten used to the idea of having twins so she was not worried as she had been in the past. Her husband was happy and supportive as usual. After another year, she conceived another set of twins, then another set the following year and another four single births. “However during my last pregnancy I got complications and I was not able to give birth with the help of the local birth attendant. She referred me to Rubaga Hospital where I had a caesarian section. After giving birth, the doctors told me that my uterus was no longer able to hold any more babies. So they suggested that I have tubal ligation. When I inquired from my husband, he had no problem with it so they blocked my tubes.”

All her children are now adults since her first born is 51 years old and the last born is 17. The only thing she does is to go to her garden every day at 9a.m up to 1p.m. During school days, she stays with her last born and during the holidays, he goes to see his elder brothers so she sends for her grandchildren.

Although Ms. Nakanjjako does not look aged, she complains of memory loss. She could not remember who amongst her children had died but what she knew was that she only has 13 children at the moment because the other two had died in motor accidents. She says that the trust she and her husband had in God kept them together. “We trusted God so much for everything that we needed and the love he had for me plus the respect I would give him kept us together. Although people say that marriage is not easy, at times it’s us who make if difficult but if you are patient with one another; your marriage will always last.”