The Old Town of Lamu

Sunny afternoon by the Old Fort

After settling into the guesthouse, Wildebeest Hotel, and trying to adjust to the stifling humidity (I'm not used to that anymore after months living in the dry season at high altitude!), I still had a full afternoon to explore.  Through the guest house, I found out about the options for visitors to Lamu and made plans for how to spend my few days there.  

Wandering through the local market

In the late afternoon (after it cooled a bit), I took a tour of the town with Mr. Ziwa Amahdi.  He was born in Lamu and has lived there most of his life, and knows every back alley and market stall.  We explored the old town as he told me about the massive wooden doors on the old houses, the shady entryways, the people who have come to be educated at the school in a venerated old Mosque, the bright red sugared baobab seeds that local women like to eat, and so much more.

Lamu Town is Kenya's oldest continually inhabited town.  It was established in around 1370, as one of the original Swahili settlements along the coast of East Africa.  The town is first mentioned in writing by an Arabi traveler named Abu-al-Mahasini, who talked about a man he met while on a trip to Mecca in 1441; the man was a judge from Lamu. 

The Swahili people are a tribe whose language was the basis of modern Swahili, which is used as a lingua franca in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. Their language became important because they were the coastal people who interacted with merchants from Arabia and India, which is why Swahili has a significant Arabic influence.  Swahili became the trade language and spread inland as other tribes brought ivory, spices and slaves to the port cities.  Zanzibar is the most famous and largest of the Swahili port cities, but Lamu was quite important in its own right.  

Some of the many donkeys around town

In 1505, the Portuguese invaded Lamu, forcing the king of the town to pay protection money to them.  Portugal captured several such port cities in the 1500s as they built a monopoly on shipping along the East African coast. There was a rebellion in the 1580s, but it wasn't until 1652 when the sultanate of Oman helped Lamu to finally take control back from the Portuguese.  

The period during which Lamu was allied with Oman is now considered the golden age of the town.  This golden age lasted from the late 1600s through the early 1800s.  The city was ruled by a council of elders called the Yumbe, and poetry, politics, arts and crafts flourished alongside trade.  A particularly famous writer from Lamu was a woman called Mwana Kupona, who wrote a book, Advice on the Wifely Duty. Many of the traditional homes in the old town were built during this period.  

In 1812, trouble began as a couple of other tribes teamed up to invade the archipelago.  They landed at Shela, the village just down the beach from Lamu, at the point of the island, but the locals beat them back. The people of Lamu asked for more help from their Omani allies to finish the partially built fort and to station a garrison in the town to protect from further raids.

Int the middle of the 1800s, Lamu came under the influence of the sultan of Zanzibar, uniting the Swahili ports along the coast.  Soon after, however, what is now Tanzania became, by force, a German colony.  Ther Germans built a post office in Lamu, the first to be built on the East African coast.  Although it was in operation for only three years, there is a museum in Lamu now in its building, the German Post Office Museum.  In 1890, the British took control of what is now Kenya.  Since Kenya's independence in 1963, Lamu has been part of Kenya, but has some amount of local autonomy.

The town of Lamu is a UNESCO world heritage site as "the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa", although in 2010 it was named as one of the sites that are on the verge of loss and damage, as the committee felt the management was insufficient, and there is a lot of pressure to modernize and develop as the town's population grows.

While the town was established by the Swahili tribe, the current population is quite diverse, as many people are descendants of not only the Swahili people but also the Arabs, Portuguese, and the various inland tribes who came to the coast to trade over the years.  Due to their long association with Oman and Arabic trading, the majority of the population is Muslim.

Lamu's importance as a trading port began to wane after 1900; today it is a rather sleepy and out-of-the-way outpost, mostly important for its history.  The slave trade (with the Middle East and India; few slaves from this area ended up in the Americas) was a major part of the economy until abolition in 1907.  Other goods that passed through Lamu were ivory, mangrove wood, turtle shells and rhinoceros horn, all of which are highly regulated today as poaching and overhunting have led to the animals being endangered.  The Uganda railroad was built in 1901, which connected inland cities with the port of Mombasa instead of Lamu, also directed business away from Lamu.  Mombasa today is the second city of Kenya.

Now, tourism has become an important industry, as it is a cheap destination for backpackers.  Many of the traditional dhow boats are now used to take travelers sailing, and there are lots of shops selling local crafts, especially wood working, and plenty of restaurants along the waterfront.  Furniture making and boat making are common. Mangroves are still grown on the outer islands and are harvested for use as poles.  

Since the town was built well before the invention of cars, the streets are mostly narrow paths that snake between the buildings.  To this day there are no cars on Lamu; even if you had one, the only place wide enough to drive one would be a few hundred feet right along the waterfront.  Donkeys have always been used for carting things around; there are still about 3000 donkeys in and around Lamu.  There is even a Donkey Sanctuary where injured or old donkeys can be cared for for free.

Unfortunately, much to the annoyance of most of the older people on the island, a few people have brought in motorcycles now, most for use in the newer part of town and to go between Lamu and Shela, the smaller town on the island.   

In the photo above, Mr. Ahmadi is showing me one of the entranceways of a traditional Lamu home.  I'm sitting in a similar one across the way.  The door, usually a massive wooden door with a particular style that spoke to the religion and wealth of the owner, was inset, with a entryway with stone benches built in.  The second story overhangs the porch, creating a cave-like shady space.  With the heat and humidity most of the year in Lamu, the shady stone spaces were a great place to sit and visit with neighbors during the heat of the day.  

The oldest of the buildings were plastered with crushed coral and shells; buildings that are restored skip this step as we now know how long coral reefs take to grow and how endangered they are, but there are still a few of the old examples left. 

As part of our tour, Mr. Ahmadhi took me to a building that has a rooftop terrace.  It was worth the few flights of stairs up for the incredible view out over the town and the channel in the golden late afternoon light.

There's the airport and its pier over there on the island across the channel; other than the airport, it's mostly mangrove farms over there. 

I know, I know, I'm posting way too many pictures, and it's boring to see someone else's vacation pictures, but Lamu was such an interesting and photogenic place that I want to share it with you all. 

The narrow streets are crowded with people walking and riding donkeys, and the occasional boy on a bicycle rushing along. 

Mr. Ahmadhi stopped to greet the granddaughter of one of his friends.  

An area of marshy land separates the old town and a new neighborhood built to accomodate the growing population.  

After a long ramble through the narrow passageways of the town, we came out a ways down the coast from the port, so we walked along the waterfront past beached boats and a lot of garbage back to the center of town. 

The old doors are incredible.  Many are hundreds of years old, and there are several common styles, all intricately carved.

As it got dark, I ended my tour with Mr. Ahmadhi.  I'm glad to have taken the chance to see the town with him; we saw more of the town that I would have known to have explored on my own, and with a better understanding of the details.  I wandered along the waterfront looking at restaurants for a while, and enjoyed a nice meal of steak with mushroom gravy and chapati on the upstairs veranda of a hotel restaurant.  It was a long day, but a good one.  I was thankful to get back to my room for a cool shower and reading in front of the fan.  (Have I mentioned the humidity??)