Travel: Lamu

Khoja Ithnasheri Mosque; Charlie's flowers; dhow at sunset.

The first sound of Lamu Island was not the gentle waves or ocean breeze, but the full-throated bray of a displeased donkey. Hooves splayed and ears back, he’d probably been asked to do something reasonable like carry the bright red crates of Coke motored over every morning from the mainland… but he didn’t feel like it and wanted everyone to know.

Not that anyone paid the slightest attention – he and the rest of the four-legged delivery fleet were piled high with bottles and dispatched to the oceanfront eateries. The donkeys are the tiny island’s primary form of transport, about as remarkable to locals as cabs are to New Yorkers. Lamu has over 4,000 donkeys – parked outside storefronts, idling on the side of the road, or clacking stolidly uphill, trailing lumber and heavy coils of cable.

The island’s only evident vehicle is its “ambulance,” a canvas-covered pickup that looks like something off the set of M.A.S.H and starts with a good shove from helpful bystanders. So when you ask the distance to anywhere on Lamu, you’re answered in minutes – time by foot, by boat, or by donkey.

Town square; frangapani blossoms; students at Riyadha Mosque; Khoja Ithnasheri Mosque after dark.

We’d come to photograph two of the nearly four dozen mosques built over Lamu’s centuries as an Indian Ocean trading hub and center of Swahili culture. The buildings nestled among the twisting stone streets of Old Town, lined with intricately carved Swahili wood doors and locals passing the time in the tropical sunshine.

As in any tiny town, we quickly met the local personalities: Charlie, the eccentric flower seller; Ali, the hotel manager who offered us his boat for a seafront shot of his favorite mosque; and Bakor, photo studio owner and self-proclaimed “Master of the Impossible,” who lamented the decline of darkroom printing and showed us old sepia portraits of the island’s residents.

Though the pictures’ stiff poses and elaborately painted backdrops hark back to an earlier era, not a whole lot has changed on Lamu since Bakor Studio first photographed the founders of Riyadha Mosque at the turn of the 20th century. One of the highlights of Kenya’s coast, Lamu attracts its share of tourists, of course, but most visitors jet straight to nearby Shela Beach to enjoy idyllic resorts and the posh palaces of Europe’s minor royalty.

Lamu Market; sauces at the beautiful Peponi hotel

But Lamu town itself, a UNESCO world heritage site, has an ageless appeal, both totally foreign and entirely welcoming. Everywhere we were greeted with a relaxed friendliness unique to residents of perfect climates, and open amusement that we would turn our fancy cameras on such pedestrian details of island life – the trees heavy with frangapani blossoms, the piles of coconuts cracked open with machetes and, of course, the donkeys.

Come sunset, after we had wrung the last light from the day and settled back on the waterfront patio with a cold Tusker beer and some fantastically fresh seafood, unattended donkeys would clop calmly past our table. I never tired of seeing them stroll by, wondering where they were going and why. Maybe they were headed to some predestined point, as the island’s donkeys had done for generations. Or maybe, like us, they simply wanted to enjoy the evening and soak in the elegant outlines of dhows against the sherbet sky.

Riyadha Mosque; town square; barber shop; moonrise.