Lamu
KENYA
Donkeys and Dhows
By LYNDI
Sunday, February 27, 2011
As Aaron and I boarded our 8 hour bus from Mombasa back to Nairobi – right after a bumpy, dusty, crowded 8 hour bus ride from Lamu, we stopped and asked ourselves, “Is a 16 hour bus trip – 32 hours round trip – on lone Kenyan highways with buses packed full of humans, chickens and roaches worth it to get to Lamu for just a few days?”.
Definitely.
Admittedly, our TSS bus from Mombasa to Lamu was without argument the worst bus ride I’ve had – which is saying a lot when you consider all the Bolivian buses I’ve taken. Not only were there 5 seats across (and no – it was not a wider bus, you were just only allowed half a buttcheek each), but we stopped to pick up every single person waving down the bus on the side of the highway enroute.
Honestly, sometimes we’d drive through barren plains for 20 minutes with no signs of life in sight – and then see a woman flagging us down from completely out of nowhere. There’s literally nothing out here! So we’d pick up her and her chickens, and she’d set them down at Aaron’s feet for awhile til they managed to crawl somewhere else. We’d stop in small towns so the drivers and other bus riders could say hi to their friends for 45 minutes and then continue. It was painful. But we did get to see lots of baboons playing on the side of the road, which kinda tops seeing llamas in Bolivia, so maybe it wasn’t so bad.
We finally arrived in Lamu and were immediately attacked and followed by about three touts (we were the only muzungus – whities – on the ferry) and finally were offered a pretty decent room for KSh1,000 per night (approx. $12). And then we were off to explore the tiny Indian Ocean island.
Lamu appears to be much more Middle Eastern than Kenyan. Doors are intricately carved with Arabic designs, Muslim mosques attach loud speakers to every roof so everyone can be called to prayer, and I sort of felt like Aladdin was going to come flying around any corner in the tiny, narrow streets. After Mombasa, one of the best parts about Lamu was that there’s no traffic – unless you count donkey traffic. The streets are much too narrow to accommodate cars, so motorized vehicles are nearly non-existent.
So how do you move anything and everything in the island? Donkeys! They’re everywhere! Either someone is riding them; they’re towing something, or just randomly roaming the streets like strays. I’m not sure if there is some kind of system, but it really seemed like anyone could grab a stray donkey napping in the corner and have him haul rocks from the dock. Pretty convenient, really.
I was consistently told that when in Lamu I had to do a dhow tour – and I couldn’t wait. Except… I had no clue what a dhow was. But it’s an exotic word, it’s a tour, and it’s on a tropical island – so at least that was exciting.
Turns out dhows have been used since man learned to float boats – they’re narrow bodied ships equipped with triangular sails and have a rather intricate balance system of staying afloat. Our guidebook said a full day tour with snorkeling and lunch should run about KSh500 ($8) per person, so when touts started quoting us KSh7,000 (that’s – like – $100 people!) we had mild cardiac arrests. However, it turns out that since the book was published, the dhow captains and workers have unionized to ensure fair wages for everyone – fair enough. But still – that pretty much annihilated any dreams we had of sailing the seventh sea. Finally, on our second day in town, we met a captain named Hassan who worked with our budget and told us he could do a half-day tour for KSh3,000 altogether, we just couldn’t visit the popular snorkeling hole. We were sold.
For the remainder of the day we walked to the Shela Beach side of the island where the more expensive resorts reside. It took about one hour to walk there – where I got a pretty t-shirt sunburn – but what a beach! Nearly empty sands welcomed us, dhow boats capsized just beyond the breakers, and camels basked in the sun. Yes – you read that correctly. Someone has (rather cruelly) shipped in two camels who now just kinda roam the beach (and, strangely, scratch their eyeballs on low branches) and sit there chewing their cud. If it wasn’t a form of animal cruelty to import animals to remote locations that they are not adapted to, I would make sure every beach had camels as they are rather entertaining to watch. Also, as we dipped into the beautiful warm waters of the Indian Ocean, one of the dhow ships in the distance did a somersault. Well, half a somersault as it didn’t exactly come up the other end, but made everyone on the beach laugh.
Lamu is also a distinctly Muslim culture, so the vast majority of restaurants do not sell alcohol and bars are non-existent… unless you go to the police headquarters where they sell the cheapest beers on the island in their AP Canteen. So we threw back a few cold Tuskers in the evenings and enjoyed the cool evening breezes as welcome respite from the days’ beating sun.
On our second day we took off in the morning on our dhow trip. Four other muzungus joined us on the ship “Jamila” and we set sail for Manda Island. Aaron and I grabbed snorkels while others walked through the mangroves. The snorkeling was only average – which Hassan had warned us about when we were bargaining down – but we still managed to see a fair number of colorful fish, corals and even a stingray. A little bit later we sailed further to another snorkeling location and spent the day in the water or aboard the lovely “Jamila” – a spectacular way to spend the day.
Unfortunately, it was just a short trip to Lamu and we had to bail before the tiny island crammed itself full for the annual festival of the Prophet Mohammed’s birth that was soon arriving – along with 50,000 expected guests. And so the 16 hour bus trip began in reverse, though this time we knew that the seats behind the driver were the best and least crammed, so we reserved them way in advance and enjoyed the extra leg room.
We got just as dirty and flea bitten on the way home as we had on our arrival, but this time we knew what to expect and knew it was just part of the journey to the charming and enticing island of Lamu.
