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Kenya Holiday Safaris Manda Island Kenya

MANDA ISLAND.

Practically within shouting distance of Lamu town, Manda _with next to fresh water _is almost an uninhabited and, apart from being the site of main airstrip on the islands, and the location of the old ruined town of Taka (favorite destination of the dhow trip operators) is not much visited either.

 Significant archaeologically for the ruins of Taka and Manda, the north side of the island is also the location of the fabulous Manda Bay Lodge. This exclusive beach camp of palm mat,wood and makuti bandas in an extravagantly beautiful setting is a perfect honeymoon retreat.when not participating iun every conceivable water sport, or taking a sundowner trip on the lodges own enormous dhow,you can swing in your hammock and be entertained by a huge variety of birds(there are bird baths outside every banda)

 

you can also walk from the lodge to a nearby Manda ruins,just fifteen minutes away.The population of this town is estimated to have been three thousand.Its a fascinating,barely excavated site,with baobabs poking through the wallsThe remnants include mihrab,and most of the walls of a sizeable mosque.Watch  out for snakes_the island has a diverse variety.Much more affordable is the delightful Diamond Beach village on the southern arm of Manda, facing Shela.Simple self contained bandas(and a rather wacky treehouse in a Baobab),sound environmental  principles,and a superb beachfront  location add up to a very fine place to stay.They have evening electricity and pride themselves on great food.The island is  criss-crossed with paths through the jungle,should you be taken by  the urge to spend a day there.Rumours have been flying  around the archipelago that an American naval facility,a new seaport for northeast Kenya,or a gas terminal for the finds around Garissa,is going to be built on Manda.It looks increasingly like it will eventually be all three,though perhaps not until the strife in Somali has been resolved.The hoteliers and farmers were given  notice to leave a few years back and the dredgers star ted clearing the channels.For the moment though its all quietened down again.

TAKWA RUINS

Whether you make flying visits to Takwa a thirty minute boat ride from Lamu,or sleep  out on the beach behind it, the site is well worth seeing .A flourishing town in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries,it was deserted(as usual no one knows why),As  at  other sites,toilets and bathrooms figure prominently in architecture.In Isam cleanliness is so close to godliness as to almost signify it_the Tawans must have a devout community.The doors of all the houses  face north towards Mecca,as does the main street with the mosque at the end of it.The mosque is interesting for the pillar at one end,which suggests it was built on a tomb site( that of the founder the town perhaps),and for the simple lines of its mihrab,so different from the ornate curlicues designs.Another impressive pillar tomb stands alone,just outside the town walls,its dates translating to about 1683,and it still  occasionally attracts pilgrims for shela (some of who claim their ancestry lies in Taka)and come here to pray for rain.

Taka has been thoroughly cleared  but,in order to preserve it for the future,hardly excavated at all.what has been found however,suggests an industrious an healthy community,living in an easily defensible position with a wall all around the town,the ocean on the side behind the dunes and the mangroves on the other.Despite this, they appear to have left in panic and as usual, there's ample room for conjecture as to why.Part of the great appeal of Kenya's ruined towns lies in the open debate as to who,precisely their  builders and citizens were,and why they so often left in such evident haste.

KIWAIYU

From Faza you're within striking distance of the desert island retreat of Kiwaiyu(also spelt kiwayu)about an hour of mtaboti,if you can afford one.A group dhow charter in Lamu is probably more realistic:You can charter a dhow for four or five days.You can expect to spend at least 24-hours on the journey on each direction depending on wind,tides and the skill of the crew.The experience of sailing, the nights under the stars,and the company of the Swahili crew are altogether highly recommended.Kiwaiyu also have AirKenya flights from  Nairobi and Safarilink flights from Nairobi via Lamu.

The island is a long strip of sand dunes,held in place with low scrub and the old tree and fronted on the ocean side by a superb beach.The village of Kiwaiyu,near the southern end of the island,has limited provisions at a couple of shops.Twenty-minutes' walk to the south, you reach a private fishing lodge on the high southern tip of the island.From here, the empty,ocean-facing beac h with reef close offshore,is just a scrumble down the sandy hillside.There are one or two first-class snorkeling spots off this southern tipoff the island,with huge coral heads and a multitude of fish.Ask for precise directions as it's possible to spend hours looking and still miss them.  

Luxury Lodges

There are two luxury lodges at Kiwaiyu.Mike's camp;closed May &June.About 2kms north of Kiwaiyu village,is a group of seven spacious,comfortably furnished bandas of palm mats and wood, planted on the crest of island to  catch the breeze.The camp, run by the completely laid-back and affable Mike Kennedy is only accessible up the inside channel between Kiwaiyu and the mainland at high tidesTheir shops sell articles made by local people ranging from recycled odds and ends, and they also have possibly the coldest beer in Kenya and brand new diving equipments:there's fantastic coral

rift off the beach down on the ocean side.Rather wonderfully,Mike's is run entirely on wind power.

Much more luxurious and slightly bigger_more of a hotel in feel,perhaps_but absolutely stunning as a place to stay,is Kiwaiyu Safari Village nestled on a pristine,palm shaded beach across the channel from the northern end of Kiwaiyu,on a spectacular deep bay,within the Kiunga Marine National Marine Reserve.The combination of extremely spacious,palm-thatch cottages(the fans are inside the enormous net)snorkeling and water sports,and superb food(dinner is served right on the beach most evenings)makes for an extraordinary place to get away from it all.

PATE ISLAND

Only two hours by ferry from Lamu,totally unaffected by tourism and rarely visited,pate island has some of the most impressive ruins anywhere on the coast and a clutch of old Swahili settlements which,at different times has been as important as Lamu or more so.There are few places at the coast as memorable.

Pate mostly low –lying and almost surrounded by mangrove swamps.Getting off the island requires deft awareness of the tides.Its remoteness coupled with a lack of information and no transport on the island,deters travellers.In truth though ,Pate is not a difficult destination,and is an easier island to walk than Lamu,with none of that island's exhausting sand.

Some history.

According to its own history,the Pate chronicle,Pate was founded in the early years of islam with the arrival of early immigrants.this mini state is supposed to have lasted until the thirteenth century,when another group of immigrants-  the Nabahani_arrived.

Probably by fifteenth century  the town exerted a considerable

influence on most of the quasi_autonomous settlements along the coast including Lamu.The first portugees were friendly  trading with the pateans for the multicoloured silk cloth for which the town had become famous,and they also introduced gunpowder which enabled wells to be easily excacvated,a fact which might have played part in Pate's uprising fortunes.During the sixteenth century,a number  of portugees merchants settled and married in town but as Portugal tightened its grip and imposed taxes,relations quickly deteroriated.There were repeated  uprisings and reprisals until ,by the middle of seventeenth  century ,the Portuguese had withdrawn to the security of Fort-Jesus  in Mombasa.Even today though  sever al families in Pate are said to wa-reno(from Portugeese  reino "kingdom")meaning poretugeese descent. 

During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, having thrown out the old rulers and avoided domination by the new rulers like the Omani Arabs,Pate underwent a cultural  rebirth and experienced a flood of creative activity similar to Lamu's.The two towns had a lively relationship at were frequently in a state of war.At some time during the Portuguese period, Pate's harbour had started to silt up and the town began to use Lamu's, which must have caused great difficulties.  The disastrous battle of Shela of 1812 marked the end of Lamu's political allegiance to Pate and the end of Pate as a city state.

Practicalities.

A mtaboti water taxi,one of the threeplying the route ,leaves everyday except Friday for Pate island's main dock at mtangawanda.(a  quite spot on the island's southeast  tip) which takes two to three hours then Faza(another hour )and finally Kisingitini(half an hour).The boats usually leave from the municipality jetty Lamu about an hour before high tide.Since the dredging of the mkanda channel,between manda and the mainland,they can reach mtangawanda at any state of the tide but getting close to Faza or Kisingitini still requires careful timing.Pate town lies in the southeast corner of the island at the head of creek  so shallow that its difficult to get up there in even in a flat-bottomed boat  at high tide.Rather  than taking a mtaboti  water  taxi,you could take a dhow to Pate.Alternatively, if  you have less time but can afford to spend a lot more,you might look into taking a speedboat which  would enable you to reach Pate town direct,at high tides in less than an hour.But timing is critical, only small boats  can make at all,and you have to wait until the next tide to get out of Pate's creek again_unless the captain goes round to mtangawanda  or siyu,leaving you to walk.

Accommodation is rarely a problem(normaly  you,ll  be invited to stay by someone almost as soon as you arrive in the village),but as there are no proper lodgings,an insect proof tent  is a useful back-up.If you plan on spending several days on Pate,and especially if you are interested in archaeology of the region ,you should ask at Lamu museum and Lamu Fort for advice.

It's wise to take water with you (five litres if possible)as Pate's supplies are unpredictable.Most islanders live on home- produced food and staples from Lamu and, although there are a few shops on the island,it's a good idea to have some emergency provisions.Mosquitoes and flies are a serious menace on Pate,especially during the long rains.The shops sell mosquito coils but it's also worth carrying some repellent for use during the day.

Pate Town

From the dock at Mtangawanda there's more than one route to Pate town.The old path,a narrow footpath through thick bush, the ndia ya pate or "path to pate"is the one old people will show you,and, once on the trail its easy to follow.You cross a broad tidal "desert",portmarked with fiddler crab holes,then climb a slight rise to drop through thicker bush,and arrive after an hour on the edge of town.However after the dredging of the mkanda channel, patean labourers have working

at enlarging the dock at mtangawanda and a tractor and trailer  carrying a barrel of fresh for water concrete-mixing follows a new  motorable road back and forth throughout the day,and will usually give you a lift.

Despite its small size,PATE could hardly be described as a village.Yet reduced to the status of a sub-location,its only link to the government_an assistant chief,its sole provision aprimary school,the town is today a mere shadow of its former self.But at least its inhabitants are said to remain the richest on the island,thanks to their cash crop,tobacco,possibly introduced here by the portuguese and certainly grown here longer than anywhere else on the coast.

After Lamu Pate comes with a series of surprisesThere's no electricity no alcohol,and apart from the tractor and a few motorbikes,no vehicle.The town plan is pretty much the same_a maze of narrow steets and high-walled houses_but here the streets are made of earth,and the houses are built of coral and dried mud,unplastered and somehow forbidding.The overall layout is confusing,with little slope as in Lamu,to help your orientation .Pateans do, infact, refer to the "upper" and "lower"parts  of the town_Kitokwe and Mitaaguu respectively.The lower part is down near the town dock,which is only briefly under  water  at high tide.If you arrive from mtangawanda from the "upper" part of the

town_repeatedly poorer and less friendly, you're likely to be struck immediately by the Wapate_the people,and notably the women.Brilliant determined women with short bushy hair and rows of gold earrings,stare out directly unhidden by buibuis. If you speak Swahili you are likely to find the dialect here unrecognizable.Wazungu are rare and,after Lamu's characteristic studied repose(well beach boys aside)Pate is arrestingly upfront in its dealings with foreigners.

The Nabahani Ruins

More layers are peeled off Pate's enigmatic exterior when you start to explore the ruins of the Nabahani town just outside the modern one.The walls,roofless buildings,tombs,mosques and nonidentifiable structures stretched across several acres,are fascinating,the more perhaps because this isn't an "archaeological site"in the commonly expected mould.Farmers cultivate tobacco and other crops on the stony fields between the walls.

Boys will guide through the ruins for a small fee but don't expect anyone to take you at night;although its very beautiful  in a full moon,you'll have to go alone because the locals are afraid of the djinn and ghosts living there.Most impressive are the mosques with two mihrabs' a nearby house that still has a facing of beautiful zidaka(niches)on one wall ,and the remains of a sizeable mansion.This last  building you'll be told is a Portuguese house .

Certainly,the worn-down stamps of bottle glass projecting from the top of one its walls do lend it curiously European flavor,and in the plaster on another wall are scratched two very obvious galleons.Its ceiling are square for timber instead of round for boriti,as elsewhere in the ruins.Shards of pottery and household objects lie in the rubble everywhere,but many of the interiors of the buildings are clogged with tangled roots and vegetation that getting in is almost impossible.It's worth preserving however;the sence of discovery is exciting.

Many of the buildings have already been demolished to obtain lime for tobacco cultivation.Without weighty financial backing,it's hard to see how the national museums of Kenya can preserve the remains of old Pate as well as compensate the farmers.Gradually,tragically,it's all returning to the soil.

FAZA

The walk from Siyu to Faza is short than from Siyu to Pate and more intresting,though high-waist grass,fertile shambas and sections of bush.It takes about two hours but you'll need guidance,at least as far as the airstrip which was inherited from a 1980's oil-prospecting venture.From there it's straightforward.An hour or so then you reach the first shambas.

Faza itself is almost an island, sorounded by tidal flats and mangroves.A secondary school,health center,police station(with nothing to do)and even a post office have made Faza the most important settlement in Pate island.There's even a land Rover ambulance donated by Saudi Arabia.Fishing is the most common occupation with much of the catch going to a cold room at Kisingitini,from where it's shipped to Mombasa.

As a contemporary Kenyan rural center,Faza makes an interesting place to walk around and you're almost certain to have plenty of time to fill before the boat leaves.A fine evening stroll takes you across the mud on the concrete causeway to the thickest on the "mainland",where the island's expanding secondary school is located.The other villages on the island,fairly modern and bunched together,lie within a forty minute walk of Faza: Kisingitini, Bajumwali Tundwa,and the closest,Nyambogi.

Faza ruins

Archaelogically Faza has less to offer than its neighbours.It was one of the most defiant Swahili towns over any attempts to usurp its independence and was razed by the Pate army over a dispute on water rights in the 15th century and again by the Portuguese in 1586 after collaborating with the Turkish army of the Amir Ali Bey.On this occasion the entire population was massared and the head of Faza King taken to Goa in a barrel of salt to be paraded triumphantly in the streets.Faza's unfortunate history may partly account for its relative lack of ruins,but one success is commemorated in a tomb of Seyyid Hamed bin Ahmed-al-Busaidy,commander-in-chief of the Sultan of Zanzibar's forces,who met hios death in 1884 under a hail of arrows.His grave or kaburi,with a long epitaph lies just outside the town.

There are several ruined mosques around Faza,including the very crumbled Kunjanja mosque.The ruins of the 18th century Mbwarashally,or Shala Fatani mosque,merit a visit however.Now theoretically protected by the national museums of Kenya, most of the mosque is a pile of rubble.Its mihrab, however, turns out to incorporate exquisite and unusual heart motifs,including the Islamic creed,or shahada,inscribed within an inverted heart shape.

SIYU

The walk from Pate to Siyu is a slightly tricky eight-kilometres.Having set off in the right direction,you will find the first half-hour fairly straightforward;if in doubt bear right.You to a crossroads(easily missed unless you look back)and turn right.This narrow red dirt path soon broadens into a track known as barabara ya gari(the motor highway_there was once a car there);it takes you to anormally dry tidal inlet where you veer left a little before continuing straight on through thick bush for another hour to reach Siyu.Wherever the bush on either side is high enough,you may come across gigantic spiders' webs strung across the path.The spiders are brightly colored,non-hairy and merely waiting for insects,but they are nevertheless intimidating.Fortunately they have the sense to build their  webs high up and well out of the way.

Siyu is even less well documented than Pate.Still less accessible by sea,the town was a flourishing and unsuspecting center of Islamic scholarship from the 17th to 19thcentury and apparently something of a sanctuary for Muslim intellectuals and craftsmen. While Lamu,Pate and other trading towns were engaged in political rivalry and physical skirmishing,Siyu never had its heart in commerce and maritime activities,and never attracted much of Portuguese attention.Instead there were enormous devotion to Koran-copying,book-making,text illumination,and cottage industries like

SIYU

The walk from Pate to Siyu is a slightly tricky eight-kilometres.Having set off in the right direction,you will find the first half-hour fairly straightforward;if in doubt bear right.You to a crossroads(easily missed unless you look back)and turn right.This narrow red dirt path soon broadens into a track known as barabara ya gari(the motor highway_there was once a car there);it takes you to anormally dry tidal inlet where you veer left a little before continuing straight on through thick bush for another hour to reach Siyu.Wherever the bush on either side is high enough,you may come across gigantic spiders' webs strung across the path.The spiders are brightly colored,non-hairy and merely waiting for insects,but they are nevertheless intimidating.Fortunately they have the sense to build their  webs high up and well out of the way.

Siyu is even less well documented than Pate.Still less accessible by sea,the town was a flourishing and unsuspecting center of Islamic scholarship from the 17th to 19thcentury and apparently something of a sanctuary for Muslim intellectuals and craftsmen. While Lamu,Pate and other trading towns were engaged in political rivalry and physical skirmishing,Siyu never had its heart in commerce and maritime activities,and never attracted much of Portuguese attention.Instead there were enormous devotion to Koran-copying,book-making,text illumination,and cottage industries like

the woodcarving and leatherwork for which it's still famous locally.Siyu sandals are said to be absolutely the best(though plastic flip-flops have forced almost all the makers out of business),and Siyu carved doors are among the most beautiful of all Swahili doors, with distinctive guilloche patterns and inlays of ground shell.

The sources of wealth and stability for Siyu's flowering are a little mysterious,but the towns agricultural base obviously supported it well and it was probably the largest settlement on the island in the 19th century,with up to thirty thousand inhabitants.In 1873, the British vice-consul in Zanzibar could still describe Siyu as the "pulse of the entire district".These days you wouldn't know it.Less than four thousand people live here and signs of the old brilliance is hard to find.Siyu lost its independence and presumably much of its artistic flair when the Sultan of Zanzibar's Omani troops first occupied the Fort in 1847_though it was twenty years before the Omani's were able to hold for more than a brief spell.

The Town

Built in the early 19th century(no one knows by whom)Siyu Fort is the towns most striking building and indeed,in purely monumental terms, the most imposing  building anywhere in the Lamu archipelago.Substantially renovated, it is one of the few surviving traces of the glory days.It's freely accessible though watch out for dangers like the well and the unstable walls.Around the outskirts of Siyu  on the south side are a number of quite impressive tombs.The big domed tomb with porcelain niches dates back to 1853.Most of Siyu's houses today conform to the "open-box" plan typical of the Kenyan coast:yellowish mud with a ridged makuti roof,open at each end.These houses stand,each on its own,with no real streets connecting them so,that although its larger than Pate,Siyu feels far more like a village.The cultural isolation of these communities from each other,a separateness which continues to this day,is easily appreciated after arriving in Siyu from Pate.There are still few buibuis here,but ther's much less jewelry in evidence and the atmosphere is altogether less severe.

 

About the Author

Anthony  Mmeri is the Editor  and Tours Director at Wings Over Africa Safaris Limited. 
This is an Air Charter Company that specializes on Kenya Holiday Safaris,Hotel Accomodation & Bookings Manda |Pate|Kiwayu| Faza  & Others Towns On Coastal Region of Kenya,East Africa. The website has guided thousands of travelers to achieve their dream holiday. For more information and guidance, visit the site at http:// //www.wingsoverafrica-aviation.com/index.php/services/tourist-flights.htmll

 

 

 

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admin posted at 2010-12-11 Category: Snorkels & Sets