Two school children are running in a narrow alley of Lamu Old Town in Kenya. They cross a house whose walls are made with coral stone and timber sourced from the nearby mangroves.
These walls absorb water during the rainy season and keep the homes cool during summer. Wandering through the labyrinth of narrow alleys, you feel like you have entered a bygone era.
There are no cars on this non-vehicular Kenyan island—a UNESCO World Heritage Site and East Africa’s oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement.
Most houses in this quaint old town have intricately engraved wooden doors with Swahili, European, Arabic and Indian influences. Outside each door, a covered porch known as daka is the meeting place where guests sit for a bit before entering the house.
On the streets are donkeys carrying building materials in gunny sacks as they manoeuvre the lanes. Some of these animals even give you company while you walk around the Lamu Fort, which served as a prison, now closed down, for 74 years.
Walk a bit further to reach Lamu Museum located inside a building with a stone veranda, and a 19th-century brass cannon stationed outside.
The museum is highly regarded for its ethnographic materials that detail not just Swahili culture, but also the influences of foreign cultures on Lamu. Close by is a silversmith shop.
Step inside and you will see the glass display case with a tray full of rings; each ring is made with porcelain encircled by a silver band. The silversmith regales you with tales of how porcelain came to this East African town.
Apparently, many years ago, a Chinese ship capsized near the island. It was carrying a large amount of porcelain, which the silversmiths bought to the town to make jewellery.
Nearby, in a workshop, a wood carver is busy making a scale model of a dhow—an Arabian sailing boat .
All dhows in Lamu are marked with symbols of the sun and moon, considered together the eyes of the ship. The sun and the moon are painted in white against a black circular backdrop of wood.
They are considered to bring good luck and symbolise the constellations sailors use for navigation. Behind the carver stand are wooden signs in Swahili like the oft-used ‘pole pole’, which means slowly. Pole pole is the way of life in Lamu, and the relaxed pace here has its lazy charm for visitors.