Lamu House and Local Ruins at Siyu Fort

A visit to the archeological ruins at Siyu Fort and Pate Island were made at the insistence of the Belgian proprietor of the Lamu House hotel.  This hotel is a spectacular property on the Lamu waterfront with impeccable attention to detail to its spare, elegant decor using local furnishings with a European touch here and there.  The restaurant serves hotel guests and other wayward locals or tourists looking for good food and some of the best service in Lamu and Shela.  I highly recommend staying at Lamu House: http://www.lamuhouse.com/

This is a Lamu House rooftop view from the terrace where we stayed overnight.

This is Siyu Fort on Pate Island 25km north of Lamu Town, accessible through mangrove creeks only at high tide.  Unlike the forts in Mombassa and Lamu built by foreigners, Siyu was built in the 19th century by local people to defend against Omani Arabs.

Local village men were expecting us and with our guide's introduction, allowed us into their village.

Siyu mosque.

Ruins of a house.

Burial tomb for a male.

Burial tomb for a female.  The grid pattern on the walls is where Chinese export porcelain would have served as decoration.  It's all been taken over the centuries.

View of the village children following us from the interior of the female tomb.

Ruins of a mosque said to date back 600 years.

I am obsessed with the mughal arch.

Siyu village life.

Who is a nugu? Nugu means monkey in Swahili and the kids jumped on the bars when I asked.

Relative of the local curator who showed us the ruins and the fort.

One of four ornate hand-carved doors serving as entrances to the fort.

Inside the fort walls reveals ruins of a mosque.

Mosque detail.

Inside the turret.

View of the channel where we arrived and a gorgeous acacia tree.

More Lamu and Shela

I set the stage for Lamu in the previous post.  Here are some of the snaps of the people, places and general indications of the way of life there.

There are no cars in Lamu or Shela.  Donkeys move all the loads such as household purchases in the market, building materials, and people.

This is next to the Shela jetty and the donkey is carrying mangrove timber for dhow maintenance or maybe for household construction.

This guy is cleaning his dhow.  Shark oil is used to seal the wood for longevity.

These ladies in the Lamu Town market did not appreciate my taking their photo but they weren't covered so I took a chance.

Some of the gorgeous produce for sale every day.

These are traditional Ramadan foods and it's almost dusk, the end of the day's fast.  This vendor has had it.

One of the many passages in Lamu Town.

This is sailcloth that has been painted.  Ali Lamu is a business that employs local fisherman who can no longer earn a sustainable living and they are taught to work with paint and the re-purposed sailcloth to make local art.  Swahili is a Bantu language sharing Arabic words.  Islam is the religion practiced on Lamu and Arabic is written everywhere.  The women are covered as they are in the Arab world and the fast is observed during Ramadan as it is elsewhere in the Muslim world.

This sign is posted next to a shop sharing an alleyway with the most posh hotel on the island, Peponi.  Western tourists do not always realize where they are and that ladies showing shoulder and otherwise traipsing around town in bikinis is offensive to the locals.

This girl is covering her head as per her family's custom.  She is in the school doorway.

She's a beauty.

I got away with this one because I did not photograph her face. 

This is a relaxation alcove with an elaborate Swahili arch.

The peacock at the top of the arch is also seen in reverse-painted mirrors in India, Arabia and East Africa.

This is the hand-carved door to the Lamu mosque on the waterfront.

This is a recently produced door to an elegant house owned by a European who owns several houses in Shela.

Aerial view of Shela beach.

Some of the 80 sand dollars I collected on Shela beach. 

View of dusk with coral formations from Manda.

Sunset over Shela.

Lamu

East Africa.  Kenya.  About 150km miles south of the Somali-Kenyan border.

I went there in early May for a week after searching for a place within a 5-hour flight with no Internet service.  There is some on the island but I chose a guesthouse without any.  For the guests at least.  My colleague and friend, Louise, joined me on this trip and we decided to travel on the night flight, supposedly arriving in Nairobi by 7am to make the internal connection and be on the island by noon.  On the afternoon that we were traveling, I heard about the Frenchwoman who was kidnapped last October by Somali pirates in the middle of the night from her house on Manda, an island opposite the channel from Lamu.  I took out travel insurance and ticked the terrorism box and emailed a copy of the policy to my (attorney) sister in Miami with a list of interesting things that could be retrieved from my home in the Arab Gulf, should something go wrong.  We missed the 9am flight to Lamu and had to hang out in Nairobi until 1pm for the afternoon flight.  So we ate a big brunch and shopped at the Fairmont after purchasing new airfare.

Lamu has been on my radar for a while.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it's part of an archipelago that was formerly one of the East African territories answering to Oman for centuries.  There are centuries of trade between East Africa, Arabia and India as well as the Far East spanning the north Indian Ocean.  Lamu is considered the birthplace of Swahili culture informing the architecture, food, song, rites of passage and language which comprise its tangible and intangible cultural heritage.  The island and adjacent islands possess a history dating back six centuries with archeological ruins that remain seemingly untouched on the islands of Siyu, Pate and Shanga.

We had a "fixer" of sorts, courtesy of the property where we stayed, Fatuma's Tower.  The name is inspired by the only architectural remnant on the premises when the owner purchased the property a few decades ago.... a crumbling tower where the daughter of a merchant lived, attended by five slaves: http://www.fatumastower.com/.  It's beautifully landscaped with majestic baobab and tamarind trees and a gorgeous ginger tea that knocked me off my coffee addiction for a week.  Our last night there, we ate at Subira House: http://www.subirahouse.com/subirahouse.htm, which was once owned by the Sultan of Zanzibar and is located next to the historic fort.  The interior courtyard bordered by ornate Swahili arches giving way to luxurious resting alcoves was an "architectural Digest" dream.  The proprietors are into the slow food movement and grow their own vegetables.  We had amazing hors d'oeuvres and then a goat palau finished with homemade banana ice cream and a pair of baby bats that swooped in and landed on the lap of a guest and underneath the table.  We scrambled to get them back outside before the dog hunted them down for sport as bats are the only creatures pollinating the baobab tree's blooms - a marvelous and spectacular finish to a relaxing week.

I returned for another week in late July before heading to the US, having made new friends on the earlier trip and curious to see and experience more.  Here are some snaps from the May trip.

These first two are the dhow ride from the airport (a landing strip on Manda with a glorified shack) to the B&B on Shela. 

These are some snaps from Fatuma's Tower of a coral wall covered in creeping fig vine, a hand-carved Swahili door set into a coral wall, a majestic baobab tree on the property and a closeup of the pods the bats pollinate, the foundations of Fatuma's original tower.

This was the view from our terrace, post-rain with a rainbow.

A view of the premises in the foreground on the way up the dune behind the property.

This is midway up the dune trek that 45 minutes on the elliptical machine (level 8) 4 times a week barely served as preparation.

Check out the whitecaps - when the winds shift in November the water is crystal clear and much calmer.  To the right is where hundreds of sand dollars wash up daily for the enthusiastic collector who must be equally innovative in packing them for the return journey.

We bought some Masai crafts from this pair including lion's teeth that my nephews loved.

This is Shela village at dawn from the top of the dune climbed on Day 1 snapped on departure day.  Check out the 200 year old mosque at the shoreline.