Lamu and Lamu Archipelago

Lamu is a town, an Island and an archipelago. If you visit you should try to visit all three. The archipelago is a chain of seven islands and a multitudes of islets, separated from the mainland at its narrowest part by a channel just a few metres wide. The mainland and the inland sides of the island are fringed by dense mangrove forests, while the seaward sides are protected by the reefs and lined with dunes. Throughout the archipelago there are numerous historical sites; visible and tangible evidence of ten centuries of a colourful, and often violet, past. Most of these settlements are Arab in origin and started as small trading stations. As these small colonies grew they absorbed much from the local people and a distinct Afro-Arab culture emerged. This culture, which came to be known as Swahili , today dominates not only Lamu but the urban centres of Mombasa and Malindi and its languages has become the principle lingua franca of East Africa .

The beach of Lamu island is 12 km of empty sands banking on to an ocean unprotected by a reef and therefore more lively and more powerful than you find elsewhere in Kenya .. but no one comes to Lamu only for the beach. The town is now well known, a delightful anachronism carrying on its daily life as it has done for centuries so that the visitor has a science fiction experience of being transported back through time. Settlement dates back to the 14 th Century and by the 19 th Lamu was a flourishing trading community. But labour immigration and a fall in the value of its exports brought, in the early days of this century, an end to its heyday. There are still many manifestations of the elegant, refined life led by the richer folk in pas eras. If you can be shown the interiors of some of the grander mansions, from the outside appearing both formidable and similar, you will find enourmously intricate plaster work unknown in the rest of Islam. The architecture is admirably suited to the climate- a series of open plan galleries almost always without doors, and interiour courtyard open to the sky which ensure shade and calm against the tropical sun. the town is crowded with houses and people, the streets so narrow that you can shake hands with your naighbour in the house opposite. The main street, ndia kuu, is lined on either side with shops and workshops, each no more than a room stretching from the streets to living areas behind. Here you will find carpenters and herbalists, jewelers and grosers, coffee houses and cooks preparing the local equivalent to Turkish Delight called halva - stirred in huge copper cauldrons, and even a factory, using Dickensian machines, which make local spaghetti, known as tambi, and coconut oil used for cooking by the townsfolk and for sun tanning by the visitors.

In the centre of the town stands the fort. Build for Omani invaders around 1812 it later became a prison and its now a cultural centre operated through the museum. The Lamu museum itself is on the water front, occupying a house once the home and office of colonial district commissioners. Before that it had housed Queen Victoria 's consul - one Captain Jack Haggard, brother of the more celebrated author of King Solomon's Mines. This museum is a small gem, housing a collection of Swahili artifacts, jewelry and crafts unequalled anywhere else. The two most important items in its collection are the siwa - ceremonial horns; one, made of ivory, belonged to a former sultan of Pate (an island in the archipelago) the other is from Lamu itself. As benefits a maritime community the museum houses a collection sea going vessels and marine tackle and there is a wonderful of the rope sewn vessel known as mtepe. A 45 minute walk from the town (or 15miutes by motor boat) brings you to the sleepy village of Shela . This is where the beach begins and the complexities of life ends. Even the beach is simple, just a 12 km swathe of shining sand lapped by a balmy sea.

To sail the archipelago is to discover. Beautiful beaches, glorious seascapes, ancient ruins, fishing and scuba refuges. For desert island lovers there are remote hideaways at Kiwaiyu and on Manda island which are the ultimate in getting away from it all. From these havens it is possible to visit the wildlife sanctuary at Dodori or the beautiful Kiunga Marine National Reserve. <Back to homepage>