SailKenya.com

Getaway Magazine, Feb 2008 For years, Justin Fox dreamed of exploring the Kenyan coast in a dhow. His search for the Swahili people's story took him to little-known islands. "The sun sank into a mess of western clouds. In the dark, our skipper picked a course among mangrove channels and eventually found our anchorage. We ate birjani masala in the pools of light cast by paraffin lamps just off a lovely sweep of beach, the Kusi breathing gently in the palms, a haloed moon tossing back and forth above us."

Every summer for a thousand years, the inhabitants of East African coastal towns looked north. The arrival of dhows with their merchandise from Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India marked the start of the trading season. Graceful, round-bellied vessels would ghost into the anchorages under a cloud of sail. Their nakhodas (captains) and crew, dressed in the finest white robes, would break into song as horns echoed across the roadsteads and townsfolk lined the waterfronts. The excitement on both sides was palpable.

This was not merely trade: it was a marriage of Africa and Asia, conducted through Swahili towns all down the coast and adjacent islands from Somalia to Mozambique. It was a catalyst of progress which transformed East Africa. The vehicle for that change was the dhow, an ancient breed of sailing craft that has plied the Indian Ocean, almost unchanged, for centuries.

The engine for change was the monsoon wind. The Kaskazi (northerly) wind blowing in the summer months brought the dhows from Asian entrepots. The Kusi (southerly) blows in the winter and propelled the vessels home, laden with trade goods such as mangrove poles, ivory, cowrie shells and slaves. An intricate network of political and social ties between Indian Ocean ports grew up around this commerce. Families intermarried, a religion (Islam) was imported, a culture was disseminated along routes determined by wind and tide, architectural styles were adopted and adapted, and a distinctive society of coastal people was born: the Swahili.

Ancient forts and forgotten cities I'd come to Kenya to explore the coast and find out what was left of the traditional Swahili way of life. My aim was to visit historical towns from Mombasa in the south to as far north as I could safely get towards the troubled Somali border.

I kicked off by flying into Mombasa on Kenya Airways and stayed at the sumptuous Serena Hotel. Designed like a Swahili palace, the structure is all towers and crenulations, Zanzibar-style doors, splashing fountains, whitewashed coral walls and makuti (palm-frond) roofs.

Apart from beaches, the reason to visit this section of coast is Mombasa's old town and dhow harbour, dominated by Fort Jesus. Although Portuguese by construction, this bastion fell to the Omani Arabs and local Swahili after a series of sieges. It then became one of the main centres of local power on the coast.

Just behind the fort, with its yellowed and peeling walls bristling with cannons, is the Research Institute of Swahili Studies of Eastern Africa. Here aspects of local culture are preserved and studied. I entered through a garden where carpenters were restoring traditional furniture. Woman came and went, clad in buibuis. Somewhere a singer's wailing voice echoed through a hall.

There I met Dr Ahmed Yassin, dressed in a white kanzu. Educated at the University of London, he's an expert on coastal societies. "My thesis was on conflict resolution among the Swahili. How our culture, religion and familial bonds helped keep us together, despite the many wars over the centuries."

"Who exactly are the Swahili?" I asked him.
Well, it's important to see us as an African culture, not merely an import from Asia. In Arabic, sahel - or sawahil - means 'belonging to the coast', which is what we are. We're essentially a Bantu people with myriad influences from both Asia and the African interior. Our language is also a blend of all those influences. Islam is at the core of our society, first adopted here around the ninth century AD. We quickly became an urban and maritime culture: sailors, traders, artisans. Sort of middlemen. We still are."

From Mombasa I headed up the coast to Kilifi where I stayed at Mnarani, a South African-run resort with its own beach from where guests can launch themselves into the creek in all sorts of craft. One of the essential excursions from Mnarani is a visit to the Gedi ruins. This mysterious Swahili city, founded in the 13th century, was abandoned 300 years later. What forced the inhabitants to flee? How did Gedi remain unknown to foreigners for so long? Many questions still linger in this eerie place.

The site is beautifully preserved in a forest, baobabs and tamarind trees towering above the ruins and strangler figs climbing over the walls. The bark of the trees and the stone are the same grey colour and texture, lending an organic aspect to the whole city, as though the buildings had grown from seeds. The streets are narrow and there's evidence of sophisticated plumbing that made use of the tide and even underfloor (water-cooled) air conditioning in places. The main attraction is the great mosque with its deep well, fluted pillars, thick walls and large minbar (pulpit) indicating the direction of Mecca.

Climbing to a platform in the branches of a tall tree, you can easily make out the ground plan of the houses, the sultan's palace with its sunken courtrooms and the remains of the double city walls. These ramparts kept the wilds of Africa out and contained the civility of an urban African existence. They also protected Gedi from attack, but at some point they must have failed. Archaeological evidence indicates the inhabitants left in a hurry.

A small site museum shows the extent of trade and the complexity of urban life here. There's Ming porcelain, ornate furniture, tombstones, beads from all corners of the ocean and intricate silver jewellery. Pride of place goes to the model of a mtepe dhow. This vessel is the antecedent of contemporary dhows. Before the advent of nails, planks were sewn together with thongs or coconut ropes. It's the ancestor of the kind of vessels I was looking for...

An enchanted archipelago
Having had a brush with the Swahili past at Gedi, I wanted to visit a traditional city state in its modern incarnation. There's no better place to do this than the Lamu Archipelago.

The Kenya Airways flight touched down on Manda, one of the larger islands in the group. My accommodation was top end: Manda Bay, a lodge that's the epitomy of barefoot elegance. Wall-to-wall grass-matting floors, alcoves with throw cushions, Swahili antiques, enormous four-poster beds in chalets strung along the beach, hammocks and day beds to snooze away the afternoon.

Part-owner Fuzz Dyer showed me a dhow they've converted for short cruises and charters. "Utamaduni was one of the last big jahazis to be built in Lamu," he told me. "You just can't source the enormous pieces of hardwood required any more. She's over 20 metres - all carved with adzes. The keel is a single piece of wood, the hull sealed with shark-liver oil. Its cotton lateen is of a special tight weave imported from India. Such a beauty to sail!"

A short walk from the lodge lie the ruins of one of the oldest Swahili cities, excavated by the archaeologist Neville Chittick in the 1960s. He claimed Manda town had its origins in the ninth century and was conducting long-distance trade more than a millennium ago. Apart from the mosque with its toppled columns, very little remains except piles of rubble. I stood on a beach strewn with pottery shards that offered glimpses of the styles and fashions of a thousand years of habitation. White sails filled gaps in the mangrove; elephants and lions once roamed this shore. The old Swahilis were tantalisingly present.

Lamu is the home of dhows and also, not surprisingly, of Islamic culture. The 'stone town' is a perfect example of the powerful city states that grew up along the coast with ample defences, a fort built by Omani Arabs, a centre of tightly-packed multi-storey houses and an anchorage deep enough to take transoceanic vessels, vital for the trade that was its lifeblood.

I spent some days there, insinuating myself into the rhythms of the place, the periodic calls to prayer, the clip-clop of donkey traffic in the streets, the coming and going of dhows determined by wind and tide. It's an utterly seductive piece of Africa and still largely untainted by things modern.

Wandering the town takes you into a maze of narrow lanes, some only wide enough for single donkey traffic. Women covered from head to foot in black - save for alluring kohl eyes, jangling gold bracelets on henna'd hands and pretty, sandal-strapped ankles - slipped into dakas (porches) and disappeared behind Zanzibar-style doors in a waft of incense and spices. Behind high walls, their sequestered, courtyard world is at the very heart of Swahili society.

Wandering along the waterfront, I took in the array of sail traffic. Boats ranged from tiny outrigger canoes with crudely stepped masts and flat-bottomed cargo craft to fishing mashuas and large ocean-going dhows, some of them double masted and double ended. Out in the roadstead lay a big Omani boom, replica of the trading vessels that once criss-crossed the Indian Ocean. Dhows here serve as taxis, buses, airport shuttles, trucks and pleasure boats. It's like stepping back into any great 19th-century harbour in Europe, where the age of sail has not yet been eclipsed by steam and iron. Perhaps ours is the last era to have this privilege.

Anchor's aweigh
From Lamu, I travelled north, threading between the little-visited islands of the archipelago. My chosen mode of transport was, of course, a dhow.

I boarded Jannat, a small jahazi whose skipper runs charters in various craft out of Lamu. David Beavan is a British Royal Yachting Association instructor with a passion for East Africa. His business partner, Shallo Issa, is a Swahili sailor of the highest order. You could hardly find yourself in better hands than these two nautical gents.

Soon we'd slipped anchor, cut through Manda Channel (watched by curious baboons) and were broadreaching in a moderate Kusi across to Pate Island. Our six kikoi-clad crewmen, flaked out from Ramadan fasting, lay on the foredeck. A moustache of white water at the bows, the creak of rigging, our triangular lateen angled like a wing ... I took the helm and felt the worn mangrove tiller in my hand; bearing off in the gusts and letting Jannat surge down the short swells of a choppy green sea. I thought of all the cargo dhows, war dhows, pirate dhows, slave ships and fishing smacks that had come this way - the craft that are so intrinsic to this place.

"This is a smaller, Kusi sail we're using," said Shallo. "It's only nine panels of cotton. In summer, we bend a bigger lateen - 11 panels - for the lighter winds. We take boat speed very seriously, especially in the lead up to the annual dhow races. I once won the Lamu regatta ... three days of intense racing."

Although most dhows are essentially open boats, ours had an inboard engine and a small galley for'ard of the mast. Here 'The Doc' (Mohamed Yusuf) cooked up excellent local dishes of fresh fish, prawns or goat, flavoured with the likes of cardamom, cumin and cinnamon. Each day their heady scent would waft over us as we sailed, accompanied by The Doc's voice singing in Arabic as he balanced the pots on a heaving deck.

We spotted the tall palms of Faza town, set back from the shore. Less accessible and far less popular with tourists than Lamu, Pate Island is even more steeped in ancient Swahili history. During the course of a millennium, various city states grew up around its shores.

Palaces and great mosques were built, forts and walls erected for defence. Intricate political games of war and trade were played out between them and with colonial powers from across the ocean.

Rounding the top of Pate, Jannat passed Shallo's home town, Kizingitini. "We have more than 50 dhows and there's quite a big boat-building industry too," he said.

Fishermen and childhood friends waved, the strains of amplified prayers wafted across the water and dhows streaked in, laden with crayfish. Sailors climbed onto long planks that extended outboard from the thwarts, like a makeshift trapeze, to keep the dhows upright in stronger wind - and maintain boat speed at all costs.

We crossed open water towards Kiwayu Island with an awkward beam sea sloshing against the reed splash boards. The sun sank into a mess of western clouds. In the dark, our skipper picked a course among mangrove channels and eventually found our anchorage. We ate birjani masala in the pools of light cast by paraffin lamps just off a lovely sweep of beach, the Kusi breathing gently in the palms, a haloed moon tossing back and forth above us. Then half the crew went ashore to sleep and the rest of us stretched our mattresses on the deck. Being Ramadan, the lads would have to be up again at 05h00 for prayers and some breakfast.

Not a tourist in sight
In the following days, we cruised up the west coast of Kiwayu visiting remote villages and fancy lodges. We camped on deserted shores and even witnessed the hatching of green turtles on a northern Kiwayu beach, watched over protectively by local World Wildlife Fund volunteers.

One afternoon found us sailing up a long Pate creek to the city of Siyu, once an important centre of Islamic scholarship and now a forgotten village with some very impressive ruins and not a tourist in sight. Its isolated location (the creek drains at low tide making approach difficult) meant it was easily defensible. Indeed, the residents of Siyu managed to keep the Sultan of Zanzibar's forces at bay for many years.

An Omani-style fort still dominates the shallow anchorage, but little remains of the town walls. However, you can wander through the overgrown remains of palaces, graveyards and mosques in what must have been an affluent centre of power. Children played among the ruins, unaware of the mighty ghosts that watched them.

The last evening found us anchored off Manda Toto atoll. The sun was setting over the mainland, a radio played tinny Arab music, a crewman grated coconuts. Shallo and I sat on the foredeck talking dhows. "Do any boats still come to trade from the East?" I asked.

"Hardly at all. Just a few from the Yemen come to sell dried shark. They arrive with the Kaskazi. It takes them about a week. They're all that's left."

I thought of the great days of trade and how the Swahili were undergoing dramatic changes in our new, global economy. First came the blows to their dominance wrought by colonialism, then marginalisation after African inde-pendence and now the severance of oceanic ties with Arabia and the Persian Gulf.

Only Islam remained as a vital link to the East and to their past. And yet Swahili culture still thrived in pockets, particularly in far-flung Kenyan commu-nities such as the Lamu Archipelago. It's there in the distinctive makuti-and-coral architecture, literature, cuisine and dress. It's also in the alchemy of monsoon winds, swaying palms and steamy mangroves. And of course, the dhow, that most beautiful of African boats.

A jahazi raced by, making for Lamu in the dusk, its lateen quivering and the crew on the rail. Yes, a civilisation born on the wind, I thought, and one that learnt to prosper from it. This wind spawned a trading system, determined how the boats were built, what was traded, which cities would rise and prosper. It was the monsoon that helped fashion Africa's greatest maritime culture.