Of love, a song and dance for the other Kenyaphiles

Kenyaphiles are lovers of Kenya and of things Kenyan. The Kenya part of the word you certainly recognise. “Phile” comes from “philia”, one of the Greek words for what we call love. You know, the Greeks were very particular about this important aspect of our relationships and they classified it in specific types, each type with its own term.

Passionate, romantic, sexual attraction the Greeks called “eros”. Another kind of love, which the Greeks called “storge”, is the love between parents and their children. Agapé, for the Greeks, is the universal, all-embracing love, like that of God. Apart from philia, eros, storge and agapé, our Greek friends recognised four more types of love, making a total of eight.

The other four are pragma or practical, persisting relationship, ludus or playful love, philautia or self-love, and mania, which is an obsession. We will not go into the details of all these here. But when you say you love or you are in love, would it not be a good idea to ask yourself, or your “lover”, what kind of love you are in?

To return to “philia”, which gives us Kenyaphiles, it simply means close friendship or chumminess, in colloquial terms. It is simply liking a person or a group of persons, just for who they are, without expecting anything from them, except, perhaps, a reciprocation of your fondness. Call it liking for its own sake, with no strings attached.

I have confessed to you in the past that I am a Kenyaphile. I am arguably the most enthusiastic Kenyaphile alive. This year marks 47 years since I came to live in Kenya, and it is 59 years this July since I first stepped on Kenyan soil, on my way to study in Tanzania. So, I have had plenty of time to make up my mind about coming to Kenya and being in Kenya.

Those, however, who know of the pampering and spoiling that Kenya has lavished on me, may question my claim of a love “with no strings attached”. My “objective” answer to that is that, maybe, there is no totally pure philia, pragma or mania. Every kind of love has a mixture or two of the other loves. I cannot, for example, pass off my love for my grandchildren, Anyango Amara and Okinyi Aine, as pure storge (parental love), without reference to the philia (friendships) that earned me a home in Kisumu.

Kenyaphiles

But when all is said and done, I love Kenya simply because it is Kenya, people, places, things and “behaviours”. This awareness was rekindled in me by the behaviour of a group of fellow Ugandans whom I can confidently describe as Kenyaphiles. These are a massed choir of over 100 singers, instrumentalists and dancers who staged a scintillating concert of songs and dances at the Apostles of Jesus Shrine Church in Langata, Nairobi, last Sunday.

I know many of these musicians because they live and minister in the parish of the church where I, too, live and worship, in the Gayaza suburb of Kampala. Indeed, I attended a performance of their pre-departure concert, in honour of their “heroic Martyrs”. These have little to do with any recent dead. Rather, the heroes here are the Ugandan pioneer Christians executed by King Mwanga of Buganda between 1885 and 1887 for defying his orders to abandon the new faith.

Namugongo, where most of the defiant young Christians were burnt to death, has over the decades become an international pilgrimage destination. Hundreds of thousands of believers come from near and far, every June, to pray at the Martyrs’ shrines. In Kenya, we are familiar with their colourful bands, trekking on foot, from as deep inside Kenya as Bungoma, the more than 200 kilometres to Namugongo.

Meanwhile, fascinating cycles of narratives, sayings, folk beliefs and songs, both spiritual and secular, have evolved around the heroes of Namugongo, which is also in our neighbourhood. It is some of the songs that the well-rehearsed performers of my parish decided to take to their brethren and “sistren” in Nairobi, to share in the mystery of martyrial glory. The show was a delight to the eye and to the ear, with scores of men dazzling in their dark jackets and spotlessly white kanzus and the ladies resplendent in royal pink gomesis.

The songs were scrumptious medley of chorales in Ugandan languages, English and our “over-vowelled” Kiswahili. The highlight of the show for me was the throbbing baakisimba (“baximba”) drums and pulsating dance by a troupe of pre-teens to the tune of “Kizito Omusomi”), in praise of the youngest martyr, Kizito, executed at the tender age of 14. I had started mentioning the show to my Nairobi contacts and I had even thought of mentioning it to you in these columns.

Upper Hill hideout

But then the “events” of the past few weeks erupted in Nairobi. I was on Kenyatta Avenue, at the ICEA Building, which I noted now belongs to the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), when the first wave of the “Generation” hit town. Joseph, my old driver, and I scrambled frantically to the relative quiet of our Upper Hill hideout. As we watched the developments of the next few days, including the widely-publicised torching of Uganda House, I felt almost certain that the Ugandan choir would not come to Nairobi. I abandoned my intention to talk about their visit.

But I was wrong. Even as I was flying out of Nairobi, on my regular assignments, they arrived in the full force of two buses and a 25-seater van, and they proceeded to Langata, where they enthusiastically performed for their appreciative audiences and congregations. I had totally misread my fellow Ugandans’ love for and confidence in their Kenyan neighbours. In their characteristically understated way, the Waganda showed me that, come rain or shine, hail or high water, their Kenyan relatives would welcome them and host them with their famous hospitality.

That is philia, maybe with a high dose of pragma, and it is not my monopoly.

 Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and literature. [email protected]