How to love a Kenyan man

Love, sages say, makes the world go round. Everyone wants to love and be loved. Forget romantic love, which has not only increasingly become an obsession of the 21st century, but also is, according to most Africans, unique to western cultures.

There is a group of African men and women, specifically Kenyans, who have unique ways of expressing love to each other. Despite modernity and infiltration of Western romantic love into Africa, such Kenyans have stuck to their traditional ways of expressing love.

Share hubby with own sister

In some Kenyan cultures, which we choose not to mention lest we are accused of ethnic profiling, wives show their love to their husbands by, for instance, allowing them to marry a second, third, or even fourth wife, mostly recommending their own sisters and cousins.

Mercy Kirigo, who inspired this story, shocked this writer when she told him about her aunt Jane (not her real name) who, out of love for her husband, allowed him to marry her (Jane’s) sister as his second wife. This was after her husband confessed to being attracted to her.

Interestingly, over the decades down the line, the two sisters are still happily married to one husband. Unfortunately, when contacted for a phone interview, aging Jane declined, claiming she was not comfortable discussing her private life in the media.  

Prof Paul Achola, a Sociology lecturer at Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Kisumu town campus, and an expert on family and marriage matters, holds the view that love among some Kenyans was, and still is, expressed in ways that anyone ignorant of these cultures would considetrange.

A wife “giving” her sister or cousin to her husband to marry was, and still is, actually one of the many ways wives express love to their husbands. Apparently, to such women, allowing their husbands to be polygamous is an expression of love. Would you believe it?

The professor breaks it down by giving some scenarios and circumstances under which such things would happen.

A woman purporting to be madly in love with her husband, and is about to die as a result of, say, chronic illness, in some Kenyan cultures, is expected to leave a will or a testament, written or verbal, asking one of her sisters, cousins or any other younger female relative to get married to her husband.

However, the good professor is quick to clarify that: “Africans, by virtue of being very rich in connotations and euphemism, hardly communicated this message directly. It is common to hear a dying woman, out of love, request one of her beautiful sisters to ‘take care of or look after’ her children. Actually, put differently, she would be asking her husband to marry her sister.”

Prof Achola adds that in case of proven barrenness on the part of a woman, the husband is given the green light to choose one of their sisters or cousins to join their marriage for the purposes of bearing children.

Social control

“Besides love, this was also a social control measure to avoid such a husbands landing in trouble by marrying women with questionable character such as a witch, a night runner or those with many undesirable character traits like thuggery. Such women recommend their own, seeing as their families had already been given a clean bill of health, so to speak,” Prof Achola says.

The professor says because of stigma and widespread of Western concepts of love, some of these African love gestures are on the decline and where they are still practiced, people discuss them in hushed tones!

The professor winds up by saying some caring women who understand their men well, and are well aware of the fact that, for instance, he has a  humongous ‘appetite’ for the all-important ‘matrimonial food’, voluntarily choose to tame the huge appetite or ‘share the huge responsibility’ with their sisters or cousins.

“In some instances, when such wives suspect their rich and generous husbands might marry from elsewhere, they uniquely shower them with ‘love’ by offering their own sisters or relatives in a bid to spread wealth within their families. Some husbands are well-behaved, and treat their wives very well.

And as a creative way of ‘gifting’ or ‘rewarding’ them, their wives or wives’ families ‘give’ or marry off one of their own to such men!

Beatings as sign of love

In some cultures, men express their love to girlfriends and wives by battering them. Surprisingly, there are women who subscribe to that school of thought. Women have been heard, especially in some parts of rural Kenya, telling each other, “If your husband never beats you up, he doesn’t love you.”

 To such women, being beaten is a sign of love. And some of such women will, by hook or crook, ensure they get beaten; even if it means provoking their husband to beat them up.

They stop at nothing, including doing something very silly, like serving poorly-cooked food, heckling or taunting their men, to get beatings.

And when their men seem reluctant to rise to the battering occasion, these women normally verbalise their desperation for beatings.

“Beat me up! Beat me up, now!” many women especially in rural Kenya have been overheard yelling and creating a racket for a thorough beating. Crazy as it may sound, it actually happens.

Some of the so-called ‘proper African men’ strictly adhere to the script of a traditional alpha male. They talk with bravado and machismo, and as part of expressing love, they expect their women to look down or away as they talk to them.

This, however, to some people, may pass for bullying, not love. But the proponents of this school of thought, as Juma Shikanda, a Nairobi-based anthropologist explains, believe a woman who is in love has to exhibit some level of shyness.

Says Shikanda: “Men who hold that belief feel loved and respected when their own women (girlfriends or wives), avoid eye contact when talking to them.”

 He proceeds to add that some smart women who know their men subscribe to that school of thought, when talking to them, however intelligent they may be, express their love by pretending to be subservient. They deliberately choose not to outshine their men in arguments by playing dumb.” 

Giving birth to many children

Musa Okech, a veterinary doctor in Nairobi, tells this writer that as a young man growing up in his rural home, women were expected to express their love to men by giving birth to as many children as possible. A mentality the doctor believes many men in his rural home still hold on to dearly.

“As long as her womb could allow it, I remember women trying their best to give birth to as many children as possible to please their men. To most men, this was a sure way of immortalising themselves for posterity,” says Okech.

Perhaps this is the reason why some Kenyan men fear dating or even marrying educated women, and frown upon the whole concept of family planning.

Cover up witchcraft

Some Kenyan men have a very strange way of going about this whole love and marriage concept.

They meet a woman and express their undying love for her. But once she gives in, they marry the woman but immediately dispatch her to their rural homes where they live with their (husband’s) parents and other relatives.

Differently put, such men ‘marry for the community’’ seeing as they don’t live with wives. They remain in urban centres in the name of looking for money, which they send home and visit such wives, once in a while.

And while there, to prove that she indeed loves him, she must accept her husband and his extended family with all their baggage. For instance, she must, out of love, cover up for their dirty secrets such as strange illnesses, impotency, witchcraft, night running, and even in the latter case, learn the trade and practice it  in solidarity with the family.