Lamu

On the bus to Lamu, I sit by the window alone in the mostly empty bus, and watch the coastal landscape roll by, the small villages with thatched mudhouses peeking behind canopies of palm trees. My breath quickens as we roll deeper into the interior. Anticipation. Euphoria. Of everything that I will see and experience, of the novelty of seeing a place for the first time. The bus occasionally stops at small towns along the way to carry passengers and drop them off. At the bus stage, we take the boat to Lamu island, the boat choke full of passengers, a young man from my bus offers to guide me to the boat, sensing that I look like a tourist and not a local, with my sunglasses and afro and sneakers. Isn’t it funny, how we always travel to be invisible, even though that does not happen? Story of my life, always looking like the outsider. Even in Garissa, my hometown, the kids and adults all regarding me like a cultural returnee from the diaspora, a daqan celis, as we say in Somali, even before I ever had a diaspora experience. The motorboat slices the sea, green and sharp against the turquoise sea, humming, groaning, and makes turns around the mangrove thickets. I put my sunglasses up and pause the music in my ears. I resist the urge to run my fingers through the water, as tourists are wont to do. There is a certain vulnerability, sitting so close to the vast sea. I feel vertiginous in the sublime.

August winds rush into our faces as the island comes into full view, the old mosque in the foreground looking Anatolian and behind it the late afternoon sun colors the old whitewashed city overlooking the sea. Boats lines the shore, some speeding by us, ferrying tourists back and from sightseeing. I stare at the vista, squinting, the novelty and beauty of it simultaneously rendering me in silent awe, the other passengers hardly looking, too accustomed to it. When we file out of the boat, men solicit passengers with lodging offers. They speak to me in bad English, even though I speak Swahili. I remain quiet, ignore their solicitations, playing the aloof tourist, scanning the city buildings behind me, stalling for the young man from the boat to ask him for hotel recommendations—having been too late to book an Airbnb, and too tired. A short heavyset man with no shoes eventually leads the way. We make a couple a turn through narrow streets. If you get lost in this town, follow the water flow, he says, pointing to the drain by the side oft the path, and it’ll lead you to the sea. The hotel looks regal, the name carved on the heavy ornate Arabic door, but it is cheap and clean and functional. The attendant is warm and chatty, this is the Swahili hospitality that draws me to the coast. It is quiet, peaceful. I immediately falling asleep to the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan and the salty scent of the air wafting through the ornate window. It shocks me how easy I fall asleep now, given how hard that had been.

I have come here to feel alone, to recharge, on holiday from the intensity and rigor of graduate school in the United States. Th stress, anxiety, the demands of it all. My friend Sadam, the one who lives in Germany, over WhatsApp had said, Maybe you should spend time alone, away from family and friends in Garissa. This was before I left for Lamu. At dusk, I head out to the town to eat. Back at home in Garissa, my mother had taken so much care to feed me, instructing the cook to always food and drink always waiting for me on the table next to the king size bed, the one reserved only for me. But even though the food had been bland and repetitive, mum would only be happy if I was overfed, so I obliged. We ate rice and stew most days, the rice overcooked and the stew too salty, and rice and beans most nights. At the restaurant at sea from overlooking the dock, I eat biryani and spiced tea, and snacks—my heart races at the sight of the snacks displayed behind the glass counter, bhajias and samosas and mahamri and mkate sinia and breads.

At night, I watch meaningless TikTok videos and eat take away snacks. The following morning, During the day, I explore the city.  I walk the labyrinthine streets. And take in the humid air. I decide I love this ancient city. It’s beauty, its ruins, its food, the ocean. I forget everything on my mind and I love the anonymity. Some of the locals walk barefoot, some ride on donkeys, the main form of transportation in Lamu. At the sea front, tour guides and salesmen offer me tours or hustle for money. One of them, a young thin man, talks to me in Somali. There are no cars on the island, he says. The only car here belongs to the governor, he adds. This is perfect, I say. He tells me he is Borana, the Cushitic cousins of the Somali. He tells me about the local Borana population, which turns out is tiny. We watch the people walking the streets, men wearing thobes and kafiyahs hawking food and snacks, the veiled women clad in black hijabs. The carved doors, heavy and gilded, the shops full of glittering things, scents of perfumes, students going back home from school. The whole city looked like one big museum. The government offices, even the government revenue authority, which were menacing and impersonal in Nairobi and everywhere in the country, look welcoming, and are housed right next to the square with the ancient fort where there is a sign that reads: Lamu, A UNESCO World Heritage City. Some days later, I would pass by DPP office behind the museum, stop and look inside, and wonder, wonder for a moment, if I could apply for a job here and work as a lawyer at KRA or KPA and walk home in the evening, stopping by the street vendors for coffee and snack. I’m struck, as I am whenever I am in a new place, that this place has existed without my knowledge, all my life and for centuries and will continue to do so, and think how sad that is.

 I spend my afternoons at the museum and mornings site seeing  small islands by boats with an American couple from San Francisco. Pat and Fran. It feels like a place where time stops, Fran says about Lamu. That’s so true, I say. I never realized that I had forgotten time until she described it.  

In the evenings, I sit by the pier and eat fresh and warm kibibi, a sweet dish made of flour and coconut, timing the man that hawked it.  Everything has coconut in it in this place and I love it. Old men sit on the benches next to me having coffee and we converse, about the history of this place, back when the Indians came and the Portuguese and the Omani Arabs. The boasts roll in, and the calls to prayer ring in the air. I feel like I am in a photo from a history book. For a moment, the numbness starts to fade away. I think of an essay I love, by the Kenyan poet Clifton Gachagua, and the line that says: When will we be rich enough to see places we can never afford.