Coastal Confessions: Back in Mombasa for IDS

The following is a collection of my (mostly academic-oriented) accounts and journals from the past week in Mombasa with Max. I promise to add some pictures and more fun posts soon. Thanks for bearing with me and continue to check the blog this week for exciting developments.

Arrival and Day One:

After a day of settling into our apartment and decompressing following our short , yet delayed, flight from Nairobi, Max and I spent the first day of our IDS getting acquainted with our neighbors in Old Town and coworkers/mentors at Jihazi. After the long day of getting lost in the maze of streets in Old Town, we headed to meet George at one of his favorite local restaurants, Central Car Park. Although the restaurant itself is lovely and covered in green grass and trees, the name is somewhat deceptive. There we spent an hour and a half discussing our plans, expectations, and goals for our time here in Mombasa, and ironed out some of the details. Basically, we came to the understanding that perhaps the best way to approach our similarly socio-politically-angled interests would be through a combination of a study of the cultural implications of coastal ecotourism and development on already marginalized communities. In doing so, we hope to gain a well-rounded perspective on the peace and conflict oriented interests Max has, and also my own aligned more closely with ecotourism and community-based tourism/development.

Day Two:

        Our second day was also somewhat loosely planned around our ability to meet with some of our contacts through the Aga Khan Development Network. We spent a couple hours in the morning at Jihazi simply taking chai with Mwalimu and Awath, whom we will be working with a lot at the restaurant. With them we discussed much about the local Old Town culture and people, and why things sometimes are the way the are in this community. For example, in the morning we chatted briefly with Sheikh Nabahani when he stopped in for Chai. During our conversation, he told us to come visit him that afternoon at his office at the Swahili Cultural Center. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, when he said afternoon, he neglected to tell us that he would be heading home early that day. Hence, when we went to go visit him around 2:30, he had already retired for the day and returned home. We understand now that sometimes plans here fall through, and perhaps that is simply a reflection of the loose coastal culture. As a highly punctual person, this is a bit off-putting at first, but I’m sure I will learn to cope with it during my time here. After all…it seems I may not have a choice in the matter.

        For dinner, we met up with George and another friend of his at a lovely local seafood restaurant called Bella Vista, where we had great food and conversation with George and Jeff, who is the athletic director at the Aga Khan Academy. We spoke with Jeff about where we might be able to help him out during our time here. He was very receptive to our offer to help out, and we have made tentative plans to sit down and hash out a rough schedule of when we can help out with the football and swim team practices after school. Surely, this activity will help foster a good relationship between us and the faculty here, as well as providing a nice release for us in the form of some much appreciated physical activity.

Day Three:

       Day through proved to be our most successful day of field work thus far. After taking an early morning run and iced coffee at Jihazi, we headed over to Sheikh Nabahani’s office, where we understood he would be waiting for us. Of course, upon our arrival, our apparent miscommunication was unearthed by the friendly askari at the gate, who called the professor and got to the bottom of the misunderstanding. Sheikh Nabahani was actually waiting for us at his home in Old Town, which is right near our apartment and Jihazi. Once we returned to Jihazi, Mwalimu showed us the way to Sheikh Nabahani who was, indeed, waiting for us in his rooftop apartment. There we spent the entire morning picking his brain as he picked ours. The whole conversation was somewhat of a challenge in its own right, however, because we were speaking Swahenglish back and forth. As a world-renowned Kiswahili scholar and poet, he is very used to visitors interested in studying the intricacies of the language and culture, whereas we are more interested in the economic, social, and political culture of the coast.

       Aside from the pleasure of being in the presence of one of the last great Swahili scholars, perhaps the most fruitful exchanges we had came out of our discussions of Lamu, where we are headed this weekend. He has set us up with many of his contacts there (mostly friends and family) and we expect to have a wonderful time there, during which we will surely learn a lot. Perhaps the most exciting part of the whole journey will be the bus ride up to the where we will catch the ferry to Lamu. Apparently it is some six hours on a bumpy dusty road in the blistering heat. Should be fun! Also, we have made tentative plans today for next week, where we will hopefully travel down to Funzi Bay with one of the parents from Aga Khan Academy where he has established a very legitimate ecotourism project. He takes people on kayak adventures around the mangroves and reefs, always maintaining healthy relationships with the fledgling local fishing villages he works closely with.

Day Four:

This day was mostly a recovery day for us, as we spent the previous night with Addie in Diani celebrating her birthday. We had a chance to visit the Colobus Trust and Foundation, where she is doing her IDS, but unfortunately were not really allowed into the buildings as they are introducing some sensitive baby monkeys to the community and weren’t taking visitors. Upon our return to Mombasa later this day, we booked our bus to Lamu, which departs early Friday (tomorrow) morning at 7:00 am.

Day Five:

Day Five was a travel day. We woke up at six to do some last-minute packing before we headed up into town to catch the bus. We caught a tuk tuk right at our corner in front of Fort Jesus and made it to the top of the hill before the little guy ran out of petrol and glided to a halt in the middle of the roundabout. Luckily, at this time there were very few cars on the road. Had it been later in the day, however, I fear that could have been the end of us. Our Swahili has gotten rather functional now, and as a tag-team we have now managed to make it through even the more difficult conversations. At the bus stop we snacked on some mandazi and samosas before boarding the bus and taking off for Mokoi en route to Lamu. The actual bus ride was very long and hot. Very hot. Luckily we booked an early bus, so by the time our bus arrived the midday sun was truly beating down on us. And once we got off the bus, the fun really began. We were hustled onto a tiny little skiff with a pathetic little 20 horse power engine along with what must have been almost 20 people (most of whom surely couldn’t swim) once they had finish stuffing us on board like sardines. After a death-defying 40 minute slough down the shoreline, we arrived at the dock where all hell broke loose as all 20 passengers (save Max and I) scrambled for dry land. I mean, the pushing and shoving was like Black Friday status. Landlubbers. Ha! Anyways, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Old Town and scoping out the offices of the organizations we hoped to meet with over the weekend. Among the people we encountered were many “captains” (it seems everyone here is a captain) who offered to take us on lovely sunset sails and seafood barbecues on the beautiful mangrove-lined Manda Bay between Lamu and Manda island. I guess they are the beach boys of Lamu. It was interesting when we finally decided to engage them in Swahili, as they were quite taken aback and took on completely different tones in the following exchanges. Still, even though they realized we were not mtaali (tourist), everyone was keen on taking us for a “free sail, my friend”. Tutaona (we will see).

Day Six:

      After a fun night out with max and our new nurse friends from John Hopkins, we retired to the hotel with full stomachs and heavy eyes. On the walk home one of our new fisherman friends, who calls himself Dolphin, showed us his “brother-cousin’s” restaurant, where we stopped to enjoy some of the local fare. Some 140 shillings later (that is roughly $1.60, food prices are so reasonable here on the island) we had two packages of chips mayai, which is the most delicious combination of freshly hand-cut french fries folded into two fried eggs and cooked on a skillet over hardwood mangrove charcoal. A long day in the sun here will really sap the energy out of you. Sleeping right through our first two alarms, we woke up at nine o’clock in a pool of our own sweat. Realizing we had almost missed our complimentary breakfast (we are making sure to be very diligent with the schools’ money provided in our stipends), we sprung out of bed and down the hall to the second-story seaside terrace and took a seat at a lovely table overlooking the bustling waterfront. Although the coastal culture has a bit of reputation for being quite slow and lazy, I think this is due to the fact that by the time tourist are up and moving during the day, most of the locals are beginning to slow their work and rest a little because most of them have been up and working hard since the crack of dawn. By the time we finished breakfast many of the dhows had left for the day to go fishing or transport goods back and forth to and from the mainland.

       Over breakfast we discussed the plan for the day, which included visiting some museums and trying to locate a couple of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) we’ve heard about in our preliminary research of the island culture, conflict, and development. The rest of the morning we spent walking the maze of streets in Lamu Town from one historic site to another, most of which we read about during the hour we spent in the Lamu Museum. The museum itself is an impressive classic Swahili building, but the exhibits and galleries inside were the really interesting part of this morning of exploring. Although the museum curator, whom we hope to speak with, was not in during the same time as us in the morning, the nice man who took our entrance fees at the door walked with us for a while on stand-by for any of our questions.

       We ate lunch at another local joint on the rooftop of a hotel next to the Lamu Fort and museum, which we also visited later this day. It’s amazing how friendly and helpful the wait staff at these local restaurants are when we throw a little (or a lot) of Kiswahili their way. Often it is clear that the cultural barriers are breaking down in just the short span of the conversations and exchanges we share. Following lunch, we headed into the fort museum in search of the curator, whom Sheikh Nabahani sent us to go speak with. Although we were unsuccessful in hunting him down on a Saturday, one of the nice young guys we spoke with at the cyber café inside the fort gave us his contact information and with a simple phone call I arranged for us to meet up later the following morning for chai and a crash course in Lamu culture and history.  

      We spent the afternoon talking to some of the local fisherman and captains along the shore about how they feel about the LAPSSET port project and how it will affect their livelihoods and lifestyles. It’s quite clear from these exchanges that many of them do not (by no fault of their own, but rather, the sneaky government who is deliberately keeping them in the dark) understand the scope or implications of the massive port project and how drastically it will change their lives. On a more positive note, after some asking around, in the afternoon we wound up at the café and office of Ms. Hadija Bwanaadi Ernst, a chairsperson on the Save Lamu committee who also edits and publishes a fantastic local activist magazine, Lamu Chonjo. Our conversations with Hadija proved incredibly helpful, especially in making plans to meet with more representatives the following day.

Day 7:

We spent most of Sunday morning waiting for Salim Bhuni, the fort curator, to show up to speak with us. Unfortunately, he never made it. Seems to be the culture here is so relaxed on the weekends that some plans simply fall through. Nonetheless, we were proactive following our disappointing morning and spent the afternoon meeting with community members including Mr. Walid Ahmed, the coordinator of the Lamu Youth Alliance, who provided us a wealth of knowledge on the controvercial port project and other youth campaigns ongoing currently. The late afternoon found us again in the company of Hadija at her Bustani Café, where we spoke further about the Save Lamu efforts raise awareness in the struggle to mitigate the risks and impacts of the port project on the local culture, economy, and lifestyle. She has put us in touch with several professionals doing work with the organization and the project, including an American lady whose dissertation is on the implications of the project on the island.

Day 8:

Today we traveled back to Mombasa by boat and bus. This long trip was made more bearable by our bus, which was more comfy this time around. We spent the afternoon at Jihazi with our surrogate mother, Mama Judy, who taught us to cook pilau, swahilit iced coffee, and viazi Jihazi, which are the most delicious little fried potato balls.

Reflection on Week One:

Max and I were very busy this week. Although our IDS may not be as well established, structured, or routine as others, I am wholly confident we have and will continue to do and learn much about the economic, social, and political culture here on the coast. George and Nicole at the Aga Khan Academy have done an excellent job guiding us towards contacts and projects that will help us in our studies, and we have been mostly successful in meeting with these people so far. I’m looking forward to this week, where we will be cooking a lot at Jihazi, visiting many local CBOs and activist community members, and further understanding the context of the issues facing the community. Also, this coming weekend we have solidified plans to do the Kayaking trip with Shak down in Funzi Bay. Wish us luck!