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COASTAL STRIP HISTORY |
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| MOMBASA |
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Mombasa is Kenya's second largest town and a sizeable port. It has a recorded history stretching back nearly 2000 years and was mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea a pilot's guide to the Indian Ocean Written by one Diogenes, a Greek living in Egypt, around the end of the first century AD. Mombasa was again mentioned by Ptolemy in the second century but then remained in relative obscurity, despite the development of a series of city states by migrant Arabs, until the adventurers, traders and conquerors visited the town beginning with Vasco Da Gama in 1648. |
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The colonisation of the coast by the Portuguese was a hit and miss affair with the invaders sometimes showing interest and sometimes the opposite. But it was also an era of strife between the Catholic Portuguese and the Muslim Arabs. Portuguese hegemony was finally extinguished with the capture of Fort Jesus by the Arabs in 1699 just over a hundred years after it was built. |
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The next hundred years was a miserable record of petty wars between the minor sultans and Omani Arabs based in Muscat. Trade, except in slaves, came to a halt until an army was sent, in 1822, by the Sultan of Oman to crush the warring states and re-establish commercial activity. Some form of Arab government existed in what became known as the coastal strip until the region was declared a British sphere of influence following the treaty of Berlin in 1885. |
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| The town of Mombasa is built on an island. Less than a century ago the builders of what was then called the Uganda railway attached the island to the mainland by a causeway. To the north a new toll bridge spans Tudor Creek, with views of the old harbour, linking the town with the north coast beach resorts. On the south side a frequent car and passenger ferry service plies across Kilindini Creek, close to the entrance to the modern port area with its multitude of wharfs and deep water berths, carrying tourists to the spendid beaches of the south coast. Mombasa town itself is a mystical mixture of ancient and modern with a cosmopolitan population blending Africa, Arabia, Asia and Europe. |
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| Fringing the dhow harbour is the Old town, a maze of narrow streets and pedestrian lanes with quaint shuttered houses and open fronted shops. The smell of spices is always present. Dominating the entrance to the dhow harbour is Fort Jesus, which is open to visitors and which houses an interesting museum displaying antiquities from the length of the Kenya Coast. Also on display are finds from the Portuguese warship the Santa Antonio D'Atanna which sank near the fort in 1697 while attempting to raise the Arab seige. |
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| MALINDI HISTORY |
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Malindi history is reputed to go back a thousand years but it can only be reliably dated to the 13th century by Arabic records and dated pottery shards.
On the north side of Malindi is an extensive salt pan system for evaporating sea water for salt; an eroded wasteland of sandstone cliffs and precipices, near Marafa, known as Hell's Kitchen and a small Arabian Night's town called Mambrui complete with its Islamic and Chinese relics. Beyond that is Ngomeni, a small village and harbour at the entrance to Formosa Bay. |
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| This great bay sweeps in an expansive arc encompassing the wide delta of Kenya's biggest river, the Tana. Near Ngomeni, and set on piles in the shallow waters of the bay is a rocket launching site where weather satellites are launched from time to time. |
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| WATAMU HISTORY |
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North from Kilifi the coast road has run virtually straight, until the turn off to Watamu, save for a gentle curve as the road skirts the wonderful bird sanctuary of Mida Creek. The creek is a broad expanse of tidal mudflats surrounded by a belt of mangrooves where three species of the eye-catching Bee-eater family enliven the dense green. |
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Near Mida creek is Kenya's greatest archaeological heritage, the ruined city of Gede/Gedi, lost city whose population inexplicably vanished in the 17th century. The outer wall of this lost city encloses an area of about 18 hectares. Many of the houses together with the Sultan's palace have been excavated and partly restored; perhaps it is wandering in a lifeless city which, without fail, evokes mystery, suspense and melodrama as the visitor relives a past era. |
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Even at high noon when the hot sun strikes down through the surrounding jungle the rustle of monkeys or the flutter of birds can make the heart leap. Few people linger in Gede's ruined walkways as the sun's shadows lengthen.
In Watamu and the Marine Park, five hotels welcome the fisherman, the scuba diver, the water skier or those who just want to relax, sunbathe and feast on an entrancing seascape. |
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| Lamu & the Lamu Archipelago |
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Lamu is a town, an island and an archipelago. Throughout the archipelago there are numerous historical sites; visible and tangible evidence of ten centuries of a colourful, and often violent, 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 language has become the principal lingua franca of East and Central Africa. |
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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 14th century and by the 19th Lamu was a flourishing trading community. But labour emigration and a fall in value of its exports brought, in the early days of this century, an end to its heyday. |
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There are still many manifestations of the elegant, refined life led by the richer folk in past 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 enormously intricate plasterwork 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 interior courtyards open to the sky which ensure shade and calm against the tropical sun.
In the centre of the town stands the fort. Built for Omani invaders around 1812 it later became a prison and is now a cultural centre operated through the museum. . |
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| The itself is on the waterfront, 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 |
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