Dhow or Donkey

There's a couple ways to get around Lamu island. The easiest and most comfortable is to take one of the dhows and mashuas that ply the waters with sails and motors. From Lamu Town to Shela, these cost about $5 for a private boat, just a tad higher than a taxi ride in Nairobi over the same distance. But to get to Mokowe or Matondoni, where we visited last week, the fare is closer to $12, unless you take the excruciatingly slow "public" boats which hold about 25 passengers - that costs about $1.50 for two people.

So, last Saturday, curious to see what Matondoni was like and after sitting too long on an invitation from one of that towns elders to visit; Patience excused herself from her Henna class and we boarded the public boat to Matondoni. While waiting to board (it left an hour late) we enjoyed a soda at a seafront café and various boat captains tried to get us to hire them to take us straight to Matondoni with a speedboat. They started at $25, but after several refusals they went down to about $17. That would cover the return trip as well. But we declined with the standard and generally accepted line that we were students.

When we finally boarded, we ended up with a seat right next to the engine, but all in all it was a good trip. The engine is a big old mechanical contraption with various bits of string and cord tied about it to keep things in place, and it started after two attempts by four guys pulling on big rope which they temporarily attached to the engine. There's no separate "gas tank" for the engine; instead one of the crew has the duty to pour about 6 liters of fuel in the engine every 20 minutes or so ; either that or it was very shiny water that he was pouring into the engine radiator. Except when starting the engine, they put a large wooden crate around the engine to keep the noise down and provide a makeshift table. Most of the men sat on the bow or astern, with the women and a few children taking up the middle. Since I was sitting next to Patience, I was stuck in the middle as well. Near the end of the trip, the boat crew collected the fare from everyone and offered a some frozen fruit drinks for sell that were stored in a small water cooler (like the kind we used to make root beer in at home, but a little smaller).

Except for a brief crossing over to Makowe on the mainland to drop off some passengers (that's where the bus station is) we stayed near the mangrove forests along the shore of Lamu island for the entire trip. The channel is quite a short distance really; perhaps half a mile. The government threatened to build a bridge at one time, but all the boatmen protested that it would kill their business and it never happened. Besides, the people of Lamu seem quite proud not to have motor vehicles on their island aside from the ambulance, a tractor for pulling around the various trash bins, and the frowned upon ATV's that some mzungu woman bought to hasten the delivery of supplies for her orphanage.

But I digress, as usual. At Matondoni we were offered a small meal and refreshments at the home of Famao Muhammad, who had invited us. And then he took us for a small tour around the town, meeting the blacksmith, a boatswain, the weavers of the village who were making mats and serving bowls. He had the habit of pointing out what everything was made of in the village - the roof from coconut leaves, (Makuti), the wood of the boat from Mahogany, the cloth calking to fill gaps in the hull was cotton, and so on. After passing by the main schools and mosques we stopped by the port to see if there was possibly a boat available to return. The public boat leaves in the morning and returns in the afternoon, so that wasn't an option. But the return trip alone was going to be $15 ; that's when I realized we probably should have taken the offer of a round trip. There was even some discussion among the elders at the port about how we had turned down such a good offer because we were students. But, instead of eating the extra dollars we made our second mistake of the day - we bargained for donkeys.


Now, normally, a donkey is a perfectly acceptable way to get around the island. We hadn't tried it yet, but we'd seen plenty of locals and tourists take the donkeys to the beaches north and south of town, and it didn't seem to difficult. What we didn't count on was that Matondoni was an hour and twenty minutes away by donkey, through sandy scrub brush. But undaunted at the task before us - or rather because we were naïve and ignorant - we hired two donkeys and their handler (Abdul Rahman) to take us back to Lamu town for $9.

They don't make saddles for donkeys, just a very course mat/blanket from plant fibers that they stack two or three high on the donkey's back to lessen the friction - it doesn't really help as padding. After mounting the donkeys we did quite well, for about 20 minutes. About that point I realized that the severe pain on the inside of my thighs was not going to numb out anytime soon, so I begged a reprieve and started jogging along side the donkeys I'd paid to ride. Patience wasn't so lucky, she was on her donkey with Muhammad (the son of the handler) and he never let up or got tired - she stayed on that donkey the entire trip. After recovering a little bit, the handler taught me to ride side saddle which requires much greater balance and attention and effort - I only fell off seven times, and only one of those times did I fall off backwards over the donkey. Luckily my camera bag broke my fall onto the soft sand behind me… no don't worry, the bag is fine and the camera just has little bit of sand in it that makes it reluctant to extend the lens. The video camera and audio recorder survived without any harm. Despite the obvious difficulties brought on by side saddle riding, it was at least bearable and I continued most of the way until we got to Lamu. Then it was twenty minutes of bow-legged walking and wandering until we reached a part of town we recognized and made our way home. Next time, I'm forking over the money for the dhow and applying for a reimbursement from my research budget. Don't even get me started on the "saddle sores".