Seventeen years old. This guy is almost 100 years older than his wife. That's mind boggling.
The best bit for me was reading his quote in an article on The Guardian's website.
"Today God helped me realise my dream," he said.
It's the same quote that you'll find when a baseball player wins the World Series, a fighter wins a championship, or even when a celebrity wins the latest edition of Masterchef. I wonder when he started to dream of marrying a 17 year old girl. Maybe he was having a full life crisis?
From The Guardian:
Somali man aged 112 marries girl of 17
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 October 2009 19.05 GMT
He is old enough to be her great-great-grandfather. But Ahmed Muhamed Dhore, a Somalian who claims he is 112 years old, said he had realised a "dream" by marrying a 17-year-old bride.
Dhore – who says he was born in 1897, the year that Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee – already has 13 children by five wives, but said he would like more with his newest, Safiya Abdulle.
Hundreds of people attended the extraordinary ceremony this week in Guriceel, in the region of Galguduud. "Today God helped me realise my dream," Dore said. He and his new wife, who is almost a century his junior, are from the same village in Somalia, he said, adding that he had waited for her to grow up to propose. He says his children and two other wives agreed to the marriage, as did Abdulle's parents.
"I didn't force her, but used my experience to convince her of my love, and then we agreed to marry," the groom said. The bride's family said she was "happy with her new husband". Somali adolescent girls are often married off to older men.
Dhore has 114 children and grandchildren. His oldest son is 80 and three of his wives have died. This was his first marriage for three quarters of a century.
