Ssentongo Vincent's family is from the village of Byerima where Sr. Maria grew up. Vincent is the stepfather of three children who live with him. His daughter's are Najjumba Immaculate and Nakazzi Olugga, who are thirteen and nine years old respectively. He also has a son Katumba Jimmy who is ten. Although the children's mother has left the home Vincent wants to continue to care for is stepchildren because he knows they will not be able to attend school if he does not support them.
My name is Vincent. I am forty five years old. I was married to my first wife and life was going on well until she became sick and died after three days. She died before we had children since our plan was to first build a house and gather enough money to send our children to school when they grow. My wife who died had completed high school and she valued education that is why she wanted us to make a better plan for our children before we had them. Unfortunately she died. I spent three years without marrying another woman since I could not find anybody like my wife who had died. My friends advised me to get a wife after waiting for three years and when I got one our marriage did not last since I was not emotionally prepared for another marriage. Few months after I divorced my second wife I got another woman who had lost her husband and had five children. When I first met her, she reminded me of my wife who had died. I immediately decided to take her as my wife. At that time I did not know that she had stopped having children. I was hoping that I would have at least three children with her but this did not happen. Since she had left her children with their grandmother who was also bedridden, I decided to let her bring them to our house to stay with us. My wife wanted her children to go to better schools but we did not have enough money to send them to those schools.
After sometime I realized that she had fallen in love with another man who was living in the next village because she was hoping that he could give her money to send her three younger children to better schools. As soon as I learned about this, I decided to separate with her but after giving her several warnings. She went to live with her aunt who also has a very large family. I still have her children since we had built a great relationship. I like taking care of her children and I do want to see them achieve better education but due to my low level of income I cannot manage doing that.
If I let these children move out of my house, they will not be able to go back to school. They will possibly end up getting married at an early age and this means they will die young. I have no children of my own but I want to take care of these children even though I am not their father. I always believe that if I had better education I would have been having a better job and this would have given me a chance to help more people.
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