Lamu

So this weekend I was on an island called Lamu. It's part of an archipelago along the coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. This picture was taken at one of the hostels where we stayed. Yes, these grounds are part of a hostel. It was amazing. Not as many frills as the one in Mombasa, but that was a 5-star resort. This place cost about 6 bucks a night. At night time I went on the roof, and you wouldn't believe how many stars you can see. I don't think I've been that far away from any major population centers too many times in my life. I got to see the southern cross again, but other than that, I really can't remember any southern hemisphere constellations.

Anyway, Lamu is a very heavily muslim island with some of the most friendly people you could imagine. Many of the non-muslims, if not most were really taking on the rastafarian lifestyle. Everyone there was super friendly. I found that they were friendly for one of two reasons: they were pretty much all really good-hearted people, and/or they were stoned out of their minds. OK, the muslim people weren't stoned out of their minds, but all of the rastafarians were. Whole lotta tokin' going on. It kept things entertaining, that's for sure. Anyway, they were some of the most mellow people I've been around. I loved it.


Anyway, it was one of the mellowest places I have been, right up there with the pacific islands. I saw two cars and three motorcycles in four days. In the same time I saw about 500 donkeys. That's how people move stuff around the island, so I quickly noticed that the acrid smell of burning garbage and diesel fumes you get used to smelling in Nairobi were replaced with the smell of donkey poo, inadequate sewage systems and rotting fish parts. But for all that, I think it was my favorite place I've been so far. There were only 15 or so other tourists there, so we were quite the novelty. It was great. It felt like turning your clock back a few thousand years. I took advantage of the time there by wandering around and doing nothing. I haven't done that for a while now. Mostly wandered the town and took photos. At one point, I asked an older guy named Hassan a few questions, and the next thing I knew, he took me to his house so I could see the view from his roof, let me take a bunch of pictures of the architecture of the place (unfortunately none of them turned out very good) and then took me to his friend's house so I could see the view from there, and answered a bunch of my questions about Islam. I really can't say enough about how nice the people there were.


There's lots of cool architecture around the place. I would have killed for a real camera and black and white film.


This is a dhou. It's a traditional muslim boat that they've been sailing through the archipelago since the 13th century, or something like that. We went on a cool ride one day. Sailing's pretty fun, even if all we did was sit and try not to get in the way of the crew that didn't speak very much english.


There are wrecked dhous all over the place. A better photographer than I would be able to get some great shots. I had to settle for mediocre ones like this.

This was the airport. When we boarded to leave, there was a guy with a lawnmower cutting the grass on the arrival/departure terminal/rest of the runway. You gotta love seeing stuff like that.


That's Lamu behind me. That's me in front of Lamu.


This was one of my favorite shots. There are tons of hagrid looking cats running around the city, climbing brick walls, and dodging the rocks that the local kids throw at them, which appeared to be one of their favorite pasttimes. Anyway, this one must not have dodged quickly enough. I came across it while combing the beach, and thought it turned out to be a cool picture.


And this one is for anyone coming here from 13 O'Clock. The one that looks like Shauna is on the front row, second one in from the left. Click the photo to enlarge it. It's pretty tough to tell from the pictures, but I've got some video of her that you can see the resemblance a lot better in. So you'll just have to trust me that the semblance was uncanny.

So that's it. My next post won't be for a while. All next week I'm going to be climbing Kilimanjaro. That one is going to take a while, but if I make it back alive, I'll throw pictures up when I can.