Married Young, Widowed Too Soon, Loved Forever

By: Augusta Osmatu Bangura

Hi, it’s Agnes Waggay again. The last time I told you how I got married at 16 and was widowed at 32 after my older husband died in a road accident, leaving me pregnant with our sixth child. Since then, life has been a rollercoaster.

Resilience has a face, and this is it!

I still live in the zinc house he left me, raising six kids on my own. He used to support his siblings, believing they would stand by me if anything happened to him. But when the time came, that support never came. It has been me—holding this family together, pushing through by the grace of God.

I sell charcoal, and slowly, my business has grown. That growth has allowed me to educate my children. My first son, Alusine Waggay, graduated with honors and is now studying law. My other son is at IPAM, and the rest are still in secondary school. It has not been easy, but God has been faithful.

Looking back, I realize how young I was—married at 16, a mother at 17, forced to be an adult before my time. I lost my youth to diapers, housework, and responsibility. But what I hold onto most is gratitude. My husband, though 10 years older, truly cared for me. He loved me. Even now, his love is what keeps me going.

But this is just how I see myself. So this time, I’d let you hear my story from someone else…

I visited Madam Agnes about a week ago, shortly after the Jamil and Nyanga Jaward Foundation surprised her with a “Love on her day” makeover at the office to honour her strength and resilience. She told me she was deeply grateful and thankful to the foundation for how they celebrated her, because she had never experienced anything like that before.

For once, the woman who gives everything got something back. She never expected it, but deserved every bit of honor she received.

We had interviewed her before and even written an article, but this time, I wanted to see her again to know how things were going.

Widowed at 32, with six kids to raise alone, Agnes has faced hardship after hardship. Three years ago, she was preoccupied with how she would fund her children’s education. Today, her strength speaks for itself. Through her charcoal business, she has educated all six of her children. None were left behind. Every achievement traces back to Agnes—not extended family, not luck. Just pure determination and grit.

Strength doesn’t always roar—sometimes, it sells charcoal and raises six children alone.

In many cases of early marriage, the young brides grow to resent their husbands, feeling like their lives were snatched away from them. In Agnes’ case, it was the opposite. She spoke glowingly of her late husband. Asked why she never married, she said, “no man wants to be with a woman with six kids, especially when her dead husband left her nothing.”

But then she paused, sighed deeply, and told me the real reason.

“I didn’t think of remarrying because of the relationship I had with my husband,” she said. “I don’t think any man could have treated me the way he did, cared for me the way he did, loved me the way he did. I was young and didn’t know what I was doing, but he guided me.”

While she expressed firmly that she didn’t wish for any of her girls to go through what she did – getting married much too early and against her will, she proceeded to speak of the love she developed for her husband with a twinkle in her eye. Theirs was a rare kind of love—a love between two souls that found each other in the most unlikely of circumstances. “We did everything together,” she told me. “I can’t imagine living with another man and I know that wherever he is, he’s proud of me—for loving him still, and for raising our children strong.”

The strongest bond is the one that never leaves. It gives you strength when it’s gone, a reason to keep going, and to make it proud even if it can’t watch you.

That was when it clicked for me: Agnes’ story does not begin and end with poverty, survival, and early marriage. It’s also about finding an epic kind of love—one that transcends even death.