Lamu - History

It is hard to forget the wind at Lamu. It rustles through the palm trees, whips up the white sand along Shela beach and keeps the mosquitoes at bay during the sultry Indian Ocean night. For centuries, a northerly known as the Kaskazi would fill the lateen sails of Arab dhows travelling in pursuit of Africa's riches. Months later, a twin wind, the Kusi, would carry the boats homeward, holds laden with ivory, tortoiseshell, hippopotamus teeth and slaves. Today those same breezes propel smaller dhows whose cargo is more likely to be fish or visitors for whom sail is the only means of transport. The wind blows hardest during the northern summer but never quite subsides altogether. That's fortunate, for without it, Lamu would not exist.

During the 1960's and '70s, this whitewashed island town off the Kenyan coast was known as the Kathmandu of Africa, a destination for backpackers and other overland travellers seeking relief after months of dusty journeying across the continent. Inevitably, its reputation spread, and now tourism has supplanted dhow building and agriculture as the chief income earner on the island. Unlike its considerably more developed neighbours along the coast to the south, however, Lamu has retained a strong sense of the past.

The town dates at least to the 14^th century, though it may be older. Through the centuries, the island and the surrounding archipelago shifted from Portuguese to Omani and finally to British rule before Kenya gained independence in the early 1960's. It was during the Omani period in the 19^th century that the island flourished as a trading center for ivory, mangrove poles and--after the trade was banned further south--slaves from the interior bound for the Middle East. The population boomed, and the island became a center for Swahili and Arab art and learning unrivalled on the African coast.

Lamu town today is small--it takes just 40 minutes to walk from one end to the other--but that Golden Age remains very much in evidence, if in diminished and often dilapidated form. Many of the larger 19^th century mansions are still standing; newer versions of the carved doors, intricate coral work and hardwood furniture that graced those houses can still be found throughout the island. At the Lamu museum, situated in a two-story mansion on the waterfront, visitors can see reconstructions of marital chambers from the Swahili renaissance as well as two huge ivory siwa horns that once proclaimed a great and prosperous civilization.