#lamutown

Our destination today was Lamu town, the other town on Lamu island, which is a 35-40 minute walk down the beach at low tide. Lamu is a UNESCO cultural site and was founded in 1370! Although it doesn’t feel like a very big town, compared to Shela it is bustling! Apparently, it is the oldest continuously inhabited town in Kenya and the best preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa. The majority of the inhabitants are Muslim and the area is known as an important religious centre which explains the 20+ mosques in various states of repair. The town was a major trading centre in the day which is hard to believe now as it seems so remote!

Like newer Shela, Lamu Town is characterized by its narrow streets (maybe paved paths is a better description), magnificent buildings and elaboratively carved wooden doors which are well known throughout the world. After the beach walk, which was an experience on its own with motorcycle taxis whizzing by, donkeys carrying huge bags of concrete and rebar, the fiddler crabs with their one big claw diving for their holes as we approached, seeing the oyster encrusted rocks, the veiled women and a variety of other things as people went about their business. By the time we arrived in Lamu, we decided we needed a cool drink and a snack, so we stopped in choose one of the many waterfront restaurants. We were the only customers and after we ordered we watched them leave the restaurant in search of the needed ingredients to make our order. My mango juice was good but Oriana’s lime juice was the best!

We decided to wander the labyrinth of streets by ourselves mostly out of spite about being continually asked if we wanted a guide for a “very good price.” We walked the main waterfront street enjoying the sites and checked out the carving shop- their art is beautiful and to watch the hand carving you can see why they are expensive. We stuck our head in one of the “new” mosques as the girls had never seen a mosque and had a lovely chat with the local resident sitting outside. Its funny, people think we are either French or Spanish, our English must not be that good 😊.

We also took in some of the artisan shops. My favourite was one that makes things out of wood and plastics found at the beach. He also employees a female carver which is an anomaly here due to that being a male dominated trade (actually everything seems to be pretty male dominated as Oriana pointed out). We also stuck our head into one of the hardware stores which seemed to have one of everything you could ever think you needed. A lot of the town is in disrepair which is apparently due to the high cost of repairs as required for maintaining the UNESCO designation. They also appear to have open sewers which makes sense based on the age of the building. They must have some underground but…

We had a look at the Fort but didn’t take the time to go to the museum as we wanted to get back to see the Dhow races. Unfortunately, we missed them in an effort to find a boat to bring us back to Shela. The boat that was coming to get us apparently broke down and then we thought we had arranged another boat with a guy that offered to help but that one never seemed to arrive. Finally, someone flagged down another boat for us and a number of Muslim women and we got in the boat. Go figure, at that exact time, the guy arrived with a boat and the yelling started. We didn’t know what was happening but we were told that we had to get in the newly arrived boat and go figure, the price was double! What a mess!! The Muslim grandmother helped us negotiate a price; she was vested as I think that we were paying their way. Any ways we made it back to Shela so all is well although we missed the whole race.

We had some relaxing time on our roof top which has a constant cooling breeze before heading out to the beach. Being New Years Day, the beach was packed with groups of people. I was most interested in the veiled women and if they would go in the water. They didn’t, that I saw. I was also interested that most people went in the water wearing the clothes they wore to the beach- jeans, dresses etc. Nobody seemed fused about it and everyone was having a great time. Many people stopped by to say hi and welcome, to ask the kids if they could borrow their diving masks, or just to see what we were doing (when I buried Tamsyn in the sand that proved to be very interesting to many people walking by). The lovely thing- everyone was friendly without wanting anything from us. One group was trying to take a selfie and I offered to take their picture of them, they thought that was hilarious and then asked me to be part of the picture. The modesty at the beach was also note worthy. The expats were the only ones in bathing suits and when they were moving about on the beach, everyone covered up. I had brought a bathing skirt thinking that would be modest enough, but I wrapped my kanga around me as we headed back home.