Have you evere dreamed of having more than one wife? Well, this man has 100 of them! Scroll down to see probably the happiest king in the world!
Abumbi II, is the 11th fon, or king, of Bafut and its adjoining areas in the
Northwest Province in
Cameroon. Not all Abumbi’s wives are actually his, 72 of them he
traditionally inhereted from his father
Achirimbi II who died in 1968. Now the king has around 100 wives and over 500 children from all of his “spouses”.
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| Abumbi II, is the 11th fon, or king, of Bafut |
Polygamy is still legal in Cameroon, it is most often found in rural areas of the country, where men have no limit on how many wives they can take. As polygamous unions are slowly beginning to decrease in the country, King Abumbi, who has ruled Bafut for 47 years, exerts every effort to preserve the culture of his people and local traditions. At the same time he understands that time does not stand still and you have to adjust to modern reality.
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| King Abumbi, who has ruled Bafut for 47 years |
He said: “During colonialism other values came in, of governance, different from the
traditional values we had and therefore there is this constant conflict between the traditional values and modern western values. My role is to blend them, to find the way forward so my subjects can enjoy the fruits of development and modernity without destroying their culture. Without a culture, you are not a
human being, you are an animal. And therefore the chieftaincy institution is the guarantor of our culture.”
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| Without a culture, you are not a human being, you are an animal |
What concerns his queens, all of them are well educated, they speak multiple languages and considered to be great “marketers”. Speaking to journalists Queen Constance, Abumbi’s third wife, said: “Behind every successful man must be a very successful, staunch woman. Our tradition has it that when you are king, the elderly wives remain to hand down the tradition to the younger wives, and also to teach the king the tradition because the king had been a prince, not a king.”
