1. The
Delights of East Africas Swahili Coast
The Swahili Coast of East Africa leaves a
much more lasting impression to the visitor than your usual
island destination. The region is an amalgam of exotic history,
ancient cultures, and white sand tropical
beaches. You have on these ancient shores excellent places
to enjoy: the sun, exotic beaches, scuba diving, windsurfing,
golfing, sailing, deep-sea fishing, clubbing, time travel,
souvenir shopping, fine and
spicy cuisines and much more.
The Swahili Coast refers to a stretch of about
2,900 km along East Africa's Indian Ocean Coast, - from Mogadishu
in Southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. This has been
the window through which -by means of commercial and cultural
exchange, East Africa's has
interacted with the outside world since at least the 2nd century
A.D.
In it's heyday, between the 12th and 18th
centuries, the Swahili Coast was a collection of rich city-states
whose prosperity was anchored on the Indian Ocean trade. The
trade mainly involved Arabia, the Persian
Gulf, India, and even China. East Africa was able to participate
in this trade due to the blessings of the monsoon winds, which
eased navigation from the Persian Gulf and the Indian subcontinent.
The principal city-states were Mogadishu in
today's Somalia, Lamu, Mombasa, and Malindi in Kenya, Kilwa
and Zanzibar in Tanzania, and Sofala in Mozambique. Today,
the Swahili coast is almost exclusively
associated with Kenya and Tanzania.
The original inhabitants of the East African
Coast were Bantu Africans, who were fisherman, hunter-gatherer
and agricultural folk. They first encountered the outside
world slightly before 1st century AD. Over
the centuries, an intense interaction with non-African societies
saw the emergence of a unique culture and people- the Swahili.
The Arabs and Persians were the first to dock
the shores in their trademark dhows. The Arabs brought in
glassware, ironware, daggers, swords, blades, pots and pans
while Persia supplied the market with carpets and rugs. Mercantile
Asia also ventured into the region, bringing
in a variety of commodities. From India came pepper, cotton,
hardware, spices, beads and cereals, and from China: jade,
silk, porcelain and rice.
The visitors went back with foodstuffs, ambergris,
tortoise shells, rhino horn, leopard skin, copper, gold and
most importantly ivory. All wanted a piece of African ivory,
and trade sieved into inland Africa where the elephants dwelt.
By 2nd century AD, the trade had come to the notice of the
Greeks and Romans alike; they called these shores 'Azania'.
Of all the traders, it is the Arabs who brought
Islam at around 8th century AD that had the most lasting impression.
Some Omani Arabs and Shirazi Persians fled south to East Africa
to escape religious at home.
By the 9th century A.D, from the interaction of Africans,
Arabs, and Persians who lived and traded on the East African
Coast, there had emerged a language that they could all understand
-Kiswahili. At the same time a distinct cosmopolitan and urban
Swahili culture rose.
The language is based on the Bantu language
Sabaki- in structure and syntax, and uses Arab, Persian and
even Hindi loan words. The borrowed words have maintained
heavy Bantu intonations. Swahili is distinctly a Bantu language
and is linguistically closer to other coastal Bantu
languages, than to Arabic or Persian. Kiswahili was adopted
as the main trade language across this coastal belt and was
spoken widely by the people along the shoreline. The word
Swahili is a Bantu form of 'Sawahil' - an Arabic word meaning
"of the coast".
Today, the Swahili language is the most widely
spoken language in Sub-Saharan Africa, and has an estimated
45 million speakers spread over Tanzania, Mozambique, Kenya,
Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Somalia, and the Comoros
Islands. The language has numerous local dialects, but Standard
Kiswahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect of
Zanzibar town. The British and German colonists can be credited
with the spread of Swahili. It is the local language they
chose to facilitate administration over a region having more
than 100 languages.
The end of the 15th century saw the coming
of the Portuguese with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1498.
His sailors were scurvy ridden and badly in need of food and
care. The hospitable Swahili allowed the sailors to dock their
shores and lavished them with food and fruit. Little did they
know that the Portuguese -who were a substantial seafaring
power, were anxious to dominate the Indian Ocean trade. The
Portuguese attacked and plunderer the cities, starting with
Kilwa Kisimani, then Mombasa,reducing them to nothing.
The Swahili coast was engulfed in turmoil
between the 15th and 19th centuries. Mombasa in particular
saw plenty of war. For this reason, the city was nicknamed
Mvita, which in Swahili translates as Isle of War. Fort Jesus,
the permanent garrison established by the Portuguese in 1593,
changed masters 9 times before 1875. By the terror of war,
the Portuguese sought to control the East African coast. But
as colonial overlords, the Portuguese were deficient; they
were mostly interested in plunder and trade, and did not establish
robust systems of administration.
The thrashing of Mombasa - the most prominent
of the Swahili city sates, meant the loss of Swahili independence
across the entire coast. The Portuguese were finally driven
out by the emerging power of Omani Arabs in 1729, when the
Sultan of Oman claimed control over the entire coastline.
The Omani's were so profitably settled in
East Africa that the Sultan moved his seat to Zanzibar in
1832. Their prosperity was anchored on the slave trade- and
it is estimated that by the 1860's the notorious Zanzibar
slave market had a turnover exceeding 50,000 Africans each
year.
Life along the coast takes on a slower pace,
and the people are generally laid back. Swahili men traditionally
wear kikoi wraps around the waists and white kanzu robes and
kofia (small religious hats) to the mosque. The women are
covered with bright and colourful cotton material known as
kanga or leso, wrapped around to cover the whole body, including
the hair. Sometimes, they wear the buibui -a long black veiled
garb worn by Muslim women.
Swahili cooking heavily incorporates the use
of spices, like Arabs and Asians do. They also use coconut
and palm oil in their cooking. There is a distinctive Swahili
architecture and building code; houses are built from coral
stone crusted with limestone, and coral rag spread over the
mud and thatch buildings. The houses are large, with huge
doors elaborately
curved and ornamented with showy pattern.
Page
2 Article on The Delights of East Africa's Swahili Coast
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