Ever thought of a small Ugandan town inside Kenya?

Boganda, a small shopping centre in Kisii district, means Buganda in Gusii, a dialect spoken by a Bantu group in Kenya’s Nyanza province. It could also mean Uganda.

In fact, Uganda as a country is known as Boganda by the Abagusii. The prefix “bo” stands for the “place of,” or “home of”.

Most people in Boganda — about 250 kilometres by road from the Busia border — have no idea why the centre is known by that name.

The Baganda people in the area have been virtually assimilated.

They speak fluent Ekegusii, with only the elderly trying to construct sentences in Luganda here and there.

I met Ernest Nyapara Musoke, a retired teacher, son of the first Ugandan to settle here — Shem Musoke. Nyapara was born and brought up in this area.

He went to Uganda as a little boy, where he meet an uncle whom he remembers by just one name — Sallongo.

“Through my own effort, I met my uncle Sallongo in Jinja, and lived with him for five years before I returned to Kenya to go to school,” Nyapara recalled.

The story of Boganda is traced to three men — Nyapara’s father, Shem Musoke, and two men known only as Katende and Nicodemus.

Since the three Baganda settled here in 1933, the place came to be known by the local people as Boganda. A shopping centre soon came up, as did an open air market.

Shem Musoke remained in the area and his family has grown to about 180 people. Nicodemus returned to Uganda while Ketende died childless in Boganda.

Musoke came from Kyamuyimbwa village in Budu near Masaka Town.

He travelled to Kenya as an inspector of health under British rule after having served the military during World War I.

From Masaka, however, he first went to Tanzania and engaged in livestock trade in Musoma. While there, he met British officials who, after Tanzania became a British protectorate, took him to Kenya in Migori to work for Kisima Reaf Gold Mine.

Musoke settled at Macalder, where he married his first wife, Priscilla Ogolla, the mother of the late Reverend Daniel Serwanga, Ernest Nyapara and Consolata Mogunde. Musoke gave his children Ugandan names. For Nyapara, his name is Junju.

Nyapara says his father always reminded him that Junju denotes the kingly lineage of the family. Consolata’s other name was Nasaka.

Serwanga served as a priest in the Anglican Church between 1959 and 2004.

He also worked with the African Evangelistic Enterprise and later with Transworld Radio. He died soon after retirement.

Musoke’s second wife, Roda Makokha, bore six children whose Ugandan names are Warugembe, Kalemera, Nassimbi, Namata, Lugumira and Mugendada.

Nyapara remembers that before his father came to Kenya, he had a child by the name Namaganda with a Tanzanian woman with whom he parted ways before marrying Priscilla.

A Briton known as Bwana Bakli approached a colonial chief, Musa Nyandusi, the father of former minister and chief secretary Simeon Nyachae, who gave Nicodemus and Musoke a piece of land to settle on.

Musoke, the father of Ernest Nyapara, thus began growing bananas, the staple food of the Baganda.

Later, some elderly people established a slaughter house nearby which developed into a shopping centre.

The land on which they settled belonged to Obaga Mageto, the father of James Obaga, who said the Baganda have been assimilated and are part of the Abagusii community.

Born in 1936, he grew up with the children of Musoke and even remembers how one morning they were told that Nicodemus was missing from his house, only to learn later he had gone to Uganda.

Nyapara said: “We were all born here and worked here till our retirement. This is our home. We have no other home. We are a family of about 180 people now”

He says with the coming of the East African Community, anywhere in the region is home, no matter where one’s ancestors came from.

Shem Musoke is the son of Mugendada, brother to Sallongo, Juko and Samuel Mawanda.

Ezna Moraa Musoke is married to a family a stone’s throw away from her home.

Since in Gusii culture people are not allowed to marry within clans, her marriage has raised questions among the youth who are not familiar with the Baganda’s history.

Some youth don’t understand why the woman married a person who could be considered a neighbour.

Fielding the question, Ezna smiles and says she is the only one in the area who married outside Kenya.

“I am married to a local from Uganda. I have adopted matoke with groundnut sauce as my main meal”.