Celebrating on lovely Lamu

We went away for a long weekend to celebrate my 35th birthday (which was Lexi’s 6-month birthday as well). We usually go somewhere for my birthday. This time, in our new home in East Africa, we decided to try Lamu, which had been recommended to us by one of my former coworkers from Geneva, who used to live in Kenya (and who is half Kenyan; you’d immediately mistake him as Barack Obama if he visited the U.S.).

Lamu is a small island just off the coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. We left on Friday afternoon and flew there. It took just over an hour to get there in a fairly small plane. On one side of the island are big, white, sandy beaches, and most tourists go there to stay at the resort hotels. We, however, are not beach people – we are not into sitting around in the sun or into water sports – so we stayed at a place in the main town on the island. When you arrive, you land on another small island opposite Lamu, and then you walk a little way toward the water out onto a dock, and the hotel “shuttle,” – a speed boat – comes to pick you up and whisks you across the channel to Lamu.

The unique thing about Lamu is that people have two forms of transportation – because it’s an island, people use boats to get around, and on land, they use donkeys (or they walk). There are really only about three cars on the island.

Our hotel was right on the “waterfront”/harbor. It was three stories tall with a verandah in front and a restaurant and bar on the ground floor. We were upgraded to a sea-facing room and actually had a suite with a big, king-sized bed. The waterfront, or “boardwalk,” as I affectionately called it, was basically about the width of a standard sidewalk that ran along the shore, and there was a wall between that and the water, which rose and fell with the tide. All along this shore were parked speed boats and wooden fishing boats that the locals worked on.

Upon arrival, we took a walk through the town. It’s an interesting place. Overall, it’s like a typical poor African town with run-down buildings, small businesses and a lot of dirt and dust. Don’t think of a quaint New England seaside town or of Bermuda. Take those places, take nearly all of their money away, then put it in an African setting. The bigger and nicer buildings (like hotels) are mostly in an Arab style – with those pointed archways for windows and doorways. The island is a UNESCO World Heritage site because it is a historical Swahili place in terms of architecture and culture. Swahili is defined as a mixture of African and Arab cultures. A unique part of their architecture is carved wooden doorways with intricate Muslim/Arab designs. The island is also largely Muslim, so there are a lot of women walking around who are covered to various degrees. Also there are a lot of people around, especially on the main square, who are just sitting with nothing to do (no jobs, which is typical in towns and cities in Africa).

“Main St.,” just one block inland, is a narrow street and has mostly small shops and stalls selling everything from fresh fruit to clothes and sandals. The sidewalk is paved, but soon after turning off that to go further inland, where most of the houses are, the sidewalks (remember there are no streets for driving) become sand or dirt. We brought the stroller to push Lexi around in and in many parts, it was okay with it, but anytime we tried to go off a main track, we ended up on uneven ground. On the main street, there are narrow channels running every which way, which are basically the sewer lines, we assumed (although the air never really smelled sewer-like).

The restaurant in our hotel was a surprisingly nice Italian place, and we had a lovely pasta meal the first night. The next morning, fishermen were up early getting their boats ready to go out just beneath our windows, but they weren’t noisy enough to disturb us. We walked around again a lot on Saturday, popping into shops selling colorful fabric and clothing that they could make for you and other shops selling carved wooden objects. We visited a historical Swahili house from the 17th century when the island was a trading post with the Arab world, Europe and India and people amassed a lot of wealth. It was interesting to see how rich people lived in Africa centuries ago. In the afternoon we visited the Lamu Museum, which had lots of displays of historical and archaeological objects. We also visited the fort on the town square. We went swimming at another hotel’s swimming pool and had a picnic lunch on the verandah outside our room.

For my birthday, we took advantage of the offer of a cruise (there were a few different cruises/tours we could choose from, going to different places around the islands) at sunset. Now, we never really found out what type of boat we were going on, so imagine our surprise when we were suddenly led onto a heavy wooden sailboat about 20 feet long used for fishing. There was a crew of four on board with us, and we set out from in front of our hotel to cross the channel in a strong wind and with some waves on our side of the shore. It was a lot of up and down over the waves at first, more than being tipped by the wind. But that happened a few times. After we got about halfway across the channel, the wind and waves calmed down, and we got to the other side and sailed calmly along the mangroves that grow on the shores of the other island. A few more times as we changed our direction into the wind, the boat tipped severely, and a couple of crew members had to do some bailing. As we headed back, we watched the sun set over the main town of Lamu, and it was beautiful. When we got back at dusk, we celebrated with a drink at the bar before another Italian dinner – more of a celebration for making it back to land safely than for my birthday.

Sunday was largely a lazy day. We walked around the island a little more and sat on the town square and on our hotel’s verandah for a while. We really had no desire to take another cruise or to take a long tour of other parts of the island, and it was nice to just take it very slow. We had a small and slow lunch in the courtyard of a classy café.

We were quite the spectacle all over the island for a number of reasons, I think. Like I said, most tourists stay on the beach and rarely venture into town, so there aren’t many white people around, especially those wandering away from the two main streets closest to the water. Most of all, however, I think Lexi in her stroller was a strange and rare site for people on an isolated island (in Africa women carry their babies on their backs). We were greeted a lot by people on the street, and many people talked to Lexi as well. They were being very friendly, but it also got annoying after a while – to be noticed so much. We weren’t pressed or harassed too much by people offering us tours or boat rides, which was good. But another odd thing that happened was that we were mistaken once by another boat captain who was sure we had talked before – he knew he had taken out another white family with a small baby.

The breakfasts at the hotel were also wonderful. They always started out with a small plate of fresh fruit. And whenever you ordered juice, it was always fresh-squeezed. It’s wonderful living in the tropics and eating the fruit that’s native to the area!

Overall, it was a fun weekend. We enjoyed getting to another part of Kenya that was completely new to us. We saw many interesting things and experienced some new adventures. And, going away from home and traveling was a good way to celebrate my birthday as usual.