Navigating Lamu

Time for a little catch-up to bring us closer to present day, here in Uganda.

From Mombasa, we took the 7:00am public bus up to Lamu. We were careful to take the oldest, dirtiest most over-populated (human, livestock and other) bus and made double sure that it would follow the world's worst road up the coast for a minimum of five hours. They over delivered and got us there in seven hours, with no suspension and three chickens aboard.

From the mainland a surprisingly sea-worthy vessel carried us 40 minutes to the small island of Lamu. The island is billed as a remote time capsule of traditional Swahili culture, unrecognizable from the neighbouring Kenyan coast; kind of a Kenyan Zanzibar without the spices or mystery - or, evidently, the tourists.

On the packed bus and subsequent ferry we were the only two muzungus (strictly speaking, "muzungu" is Swahili for "white person" but it's come to be used more like "foreigner" or "tourist" as opposed to "whitey" - at least that's what they tell us) except for one other couple who turned out to be from Montreal. When the four of us got off the ferry, the pier was suddenly clogged with so many rushing bodies that it seemed the annual wildebeest migration had followed a wider circuit and was heading straight for us. But instead, we were assailed by the local tourist starved touts. Every one of them had a cheap hotel in mind for us and hand already on our backpacks. We eventually shook most of them off (keeping a few with us seemed to act as a deterrent to the others) and found a place called Amu Guesthouse to stay.

Lamu's narrow lane ways were immediately striking. Old Town was built almost entirely of 4 - 6 story buildings positioned with a certain randomness (i.e. non-grid like) but a uniform distance across from each other. The result is a maze of relatively tall buildings that follow "roads" at diagonals to each other which are never wider than roughly three shoulder-widths. And there are donkeys. Everywhere. Apparently the small town has over 2,000 donkeys - enough to necessitate a donkey sanctuary (presumably where donkeys can't be persecuted for donkey crimes).

There's more than a slight issue with donkey droppings. Galoshes are appropriate after medium to heavy rains. Aside from that, the donkeys were very cool - they're used to transport everything on the island; donkeys fit through the lane ways, cars do not. (There are no cars). They can also transport muzungus. Although, in fairness my donkey seemed a little bowed after about 15 minutes of light cantering. Laura's donkey was much more fit (yes, I blame my donkey) and was followed by a juvenile offspring for our entire ride. We passed a local lady carrying a baby at one point and without notice, Laura was soon riding with the crying baby on her lap, as if she was trying to make a kidnapping getaway on donkeyback.

We also took a cruise around the island in a traditional boat with a group of six other tourists (apparently high season has kicked off). The boat was a large "dhow" (basically the original sailboat) with a patchwork sail and an aggressive approach to turning. Early on we passed a similar boat that was waving a large Canadian flag. We had a great sail and stopped for fishing, lunch and a swim at a nearby island. Before heading back we were informed that the Canadian boat had capsized, dumping all of its passengers and their cameras, cell phones, iPods etc. Everyone was fine, but we're concerned that next June's tourism level may dip from 15 people to eight or nine - a nearly 50% drop!

We decided to fly from a nearby airport back to Malindi and Nairobi and then on to Entebbe, Uganda. Technically, this is considered cheating amongst overland backpacking aficionados, but those people are just dirty hippies so who really cares?

I won't go into the size of the airplanes or the security level at the airports - let's just say that the only thing stopping you from sneaking a donkey onto the place is the size of the plane itself. What was noteworthy was the moment when the guy checked our tickets before boarding the plane. Something seemed familiar about him. I gave him a squinty look for a minute and then it hit me. "Aren't you the guy who sold us our tickets, ... on the other island? "Yes" he said. That's a little concerning. Surely an airline - regardless of its size - should have more than one employee especially when that employee would otherwise be required to travel between two islands every day to perform someonelse's job.
"Are you the pilot too?"
"No."
"Good enough for me." Next stop, Uganda.