“22 boys and 16 girls,” says Esquire cover star Joe Hattab in a video he posted 8 months ago, documenting a YouTube video of a 40-year-old mother with a rare medical condition.
On a visit to Uganda situated in East Africa, Joe discovered a family of 39 living under one roof in a small shanty home. The documentary uncovered the medical conditions of why one woman had so many children due to her “being too fertile”. Meriem, known as Mama Uganda in the video, explains her story of being sold as a young girl at the age of 12 years before giving birth at the age of 13. The translator explains that Mama Uganda has had “twins 5 times, triplets 5 times and quadruplets 5 times” with a total of 44 children, 38 of which are living.
The video received over 5 million views, nearly 300 thousand likes, and numerous amounts of comments asking Joe to help her. In Joe’s latest upload on YouTube entitled ‘We bought a truck to Mama Uganda,’ we see pure emotion, love, and gratitude projecting out of the video and touching our hearts as the documentary unfolds.
The recent upload already has nearly 3 million views and 261 thousand likes with numbers going up by the minute and messages of support flooding the comments section. The natural storyteller, Joe Hattab, shares a detailed document of his flight to Uganda, choosing a large truck for the family, and surprising Meriem and her children with the gift. Her reaction was priceless, touching the hearts of millions of viewers who watched the documentary, and showing us the power of video content, influencers using their voice, and communities connecting together with one another.
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