Travel

Vibrant: me on Lamu Island far too long ago

It was a four day trip over Christmas. We’d been living in Kenya for three or so years by then, and another five to go before we would return to the UK for good. Lamu Island set my imagination alight. Later I began writing a teen adventure aimed at the African schools literature market. It was published by Macmillan in their Pacesetters series around the time we left Kenya in 2000. It’s still in print, and even if I say so myself, quite a good yarn. I have a feeling my brain cells were a little more vibrant back then. Perhaps they are craving the African light…

Vibrant

In the background on Zanzibar’s farms

One of the must-do tours if you visit Zanzibar is a trip around the island’s spice and fruit farms. Hari our guide was intent that we should taste everything we saw growing, so here he is bargaining with a farmer for a ready-to-eat bunch of bananas. You can see the banana grove in the top left corner. Banana branches are usually harvested when the fruit is still green. There’s a knack of knowing just when to cut them.

Being a nosy writer who is always in need of background detail, and also a one-time student of cultural anthropology, I try to capture slice-of-life moments whenever I can. They’re usually not the best quality photos, but I hope to make up for technical shortcomings with content interest. (And yes it would be nice to have both). So here is my take on this week’s Thursday’s Special challenge from Paula – ‘in the background’. My choice of subject, however, did mean I had to switch my blog snow off. There’s enough climate change going on without having icy precipitation on Zanzibar.

This farming family has a jackfruit orchard, as well as coconut palms. The jackfruit apparently weren’t ready for tasting, but I was anyway more distracted by the presence of the domesticated Muscovy duck. Now how did that arrive in the tropics? The mabati iron sheets on the farm house roof (i.e. instead of traditional palm thatch) are a sign of prosperity, and therefore of status.

I’m wondering where this little girl is off to in such a hurry. Also one of the reasons why I’m showing off the tall trees in the background is that if you intend to make a living from them, then someone has to climb up them to pick the fruit…

Thursday’s Special: In the background

The Land-Water Interface

Where Maine meets the Atlantic on a foggy late September day

Transition

Three dhows at sundown on Lamu

You, the very lovely people who have been following my blog for a while, will have seen this image before – possibly more than once. But I’m sure you won’t mind seeing it again. Even if I say so myself, it is a blissful scene, and a chance capture in the Manda Strait on Boxing Day too long ago.
Trio

Walking through time on Lincoln’s Steep Hill

Steep Hill in Lincoln has seen a lot of history its time. The invading Romans built the first road around AD 48 to link their legionary fort of Lindum Colonia on the top of the hill with the riverside Iron Age settlement at bottom. After the Romans came marauding Vikings, who then gave up pillage for commerce, and so turned Lincoln into a thriving trading centre. Next in 1066 came the invading Normans. All have left traces of themselves around the city.

Today, Steep Hill ranks among the most scenic streets in Britain. It now links the city’s historic Cathedral Quarter in Bailgate, with the bustling shopping centre down by the river.

But a word of warning. You definitely need to take plenty of time to walk up it. In the lower reaches it rises seven feet for every one foot (just over 2 metres for every 0.6 metres). In fact I was so concerned about staying alive on the ascent, I forgot to take any photos until I stopped for a breather outside this curio shop (above). The building itself is unremarkable, probably nineteenth century, but it struck me that it has many things of its own to say about the passing of time. I like the worn steps and the old bicycle. I also imagine that it might once have been a corner shop where you popped in for your milk and bread and a packet of tea.

Heading on, though, you come upon these astonishing old sandstone buildings. The Jews House is 12th century, and dates from the time when the city had a strong Jewish community. But like many others in medieval England they fell foul of bigotry and false accusations, and the entire community was expelled in 1290. The Norman House below it is also 12th century, and said to be one of the oldest surviving domestic buildings in Britain.

And it’s at this point we reach the part of the street that is seriously concerned with a preoccupation of our own time – shopping:

At the top of the hill is Castle Square. The castle was built by the Normans on the site of the Roman fort, but it was under wraps and being restored when were there so I couldn’t photograph it. Ahead, though, you can see the fine timbered 16th century building that was once a Tudor merchant’s home, and is now the Tourist Information Centre.

And finally, coming up is the building we’ve been struggling up the hill to see – Lincoln Cathedral in all its splendour. Work began on it in 1088, and continued through several phases over the following centuries. The towers, for instance, were raised and improved upon during the early 1300s. All in all a breath-taking feat of architectural engineering, to say nothing of standing the test of time. It is Britain’s third largest cathedral:

And so if any of you are thinking of visiting the UK, Lincoln is definitely a must. It is a city to wander around, layers and layers of time revealed at every turn. There are museums and galleries and even a surviving town windmill. Pleasingly, too, the cathedral towers now provide nesting sites for peregrine falcons. As you walk around the precincts their mournful calls echo off the leaded roofs. These sounds, too, give one a wistful sense of times past.

Today Paula’s guest, Debbie Smyth, at Thursday’s Special is asking us to think about time. Please visit Debbie and Paula for their own interpretations of the theme.

Wind Catching ~ The Ancient Art And Science Of Persian Air Conditioning

Wind towers – aren’t they just beautiful? Not only that, they provide low-tech, totally renewable energy solutions to day-time desert heat waves. Within the capped tower is a port that is opened towards the prevailing wind. Some towers are multi-directional, the vents opened and closed as appropriate. Air is drawn into the living quarters below, its movement providing the cooling effect.

When there is no wind, the tower acts as a chimney, venting hot air from the interior. A more sophisticated version involves an underground canal, qanat, in which case the wind tower vent is opened away from the prevailing wind, and the system pulls cooling air up from the canal. You can read more about this if you follow the link.

But it seems to me to be an example of perfect human ingenuity – problem solving with minimal impact on the natural environment, while at the same time harnessing natural resources without depleting them. Persian architect-engineers came up with such elegant and aesthetically pleasing solutions over 2 millennia ago, although Ancient Egyptians apparently had something similar.

And not only can you have upmarket palace installations, but there is also the demountable, flat-pack desert nomad version.

The first kind was photographed (above and below) in Dubai at the restored Sheik Saeed Al Maktoum House on Dubai Creek. It is now a museum, but built in 1894, it was originally the home of the ruling Al Maktoum family. Persian architectural techniques arrived in Dubai in the nineteenth century along with the development of the pearl fishing industry there.

The portable Bedouin version I spotted in the Dubai Museum in the courtyard of the old fort. Apparently the disadvantage of this kind of makeshift structure was that close proximity to the cooking hearth could have the unintended consequence of turning it into an actual chimney, and thus a major fire hazard.

For more wind themed posts please visit Ailsa’s blog at Where’s My Backpack

Thursday’s Special: gold Inside

In the afternoons, Cousin Jan’s cottage by the sea in Southern Maine fills with September sunshine. Everything about the place is golden: scent of old timbers, sand in the floor boards, the sun bleached covers of the cushions. The play of light makes me think of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu or Colette’s Le blé en herbe. You want to curl up like a cat, absorb the warmth through every pore, and dream. The cottage has just the places to do this too. You can slumber, lulled by the breeze in the garden pines and the neighbours’ wind chimes. Later, as the day’s warmth fades, you can blow the dreaming away, walking briskly along the beach that stretches for miles, the Atlantic rolling in at your feet.

Thursday’s Special: Gold Inside

This week at Lost in Translation, Paula has invited guest blogger, Ron, to share his insights on interior photography. Follow the link to see his wonderful work. And then go here to see Paula’s and other bloggers’ responses to the challenge.

Half and Half: Reef and Sky

Capricho Cove, South Mombasa coast. Some of you will have seen this photo several times before. But I’m sure you won’t mind seeing it again.
Half and Half

Timbuktu: doorway to the past

I haven’t snaffled any of Graham’s photos for a while, but as doors go, both of itself and where it is located, and the fact that a Tuareg pastoralist happened to step into the frame, I thought this was one well worth posting. It was taken on G’s Africa overland trip during a stopover in Timbuktu.

The plaque above the door marks the fact that French explorer René Caillié once stayed in this house. The stay was brief, two weeks in April/May 1827, but he had apparently spent many months in preparation, staying with the Moors in Mauretania, learning Arabic, and converting to Islam so he could pass himself off as an Arab. His objective was to win a 10,000-franc reward offered by the Société de Géographie in Paris, and to do this he had to be the first European to see and return alive from Timbuktu. That he lived to tell the tale is recounted in his work Description de la ville de Temboctou. The rest of his life, however, was sadly foreshortened by tuberculosis. He died in his homeland of Western France at the age of thirty eight.

Timbuktu of course has a long and illustrious history. From 1325 AD it became part of the immensely rich and highly cultivated Malian Empire under the rule, Musa Keita I, also known as Mansa Musa (c. 1280 – c. 1337). He was probably the richest man who has ever lived, and it was he who developed the town, bringing in architects from Andalusia in Spain, and from Cairo to build his grand palace and the great Djinguereber Mosque. He also had built in the town the University of Sankore, which attracted scholars from across Africa and Middle East. He brought in lawyers, mathematicians and astronomers to staff it, and so began the growth of the magnificent libraries of Timbuktu, and the town as a centre of learning and commerce.

Since that time, thousands of manuscripts had been gathered and cared for by individual Timbuktu families, and treasured as priceless family heirlooms. It is reckoned there are some 300,000 works held in such private family collections. They include not only theological texts, but works on geography and astronomy. Most are in Arabic script, but some are written in African languages of the region.

There was also in Timbuktu until recently, a state-of-the-art conservation library funded by the South African Thabo Mbeki Foundation. This held many thousands of manuscripts, and when Islamist terrorists invaded the town and torched the centre in 2013, it was feared that these works of international importance had been destroyed. However, the people of Timbuktu had seen the destroyers coming and, desperate to save their heritage, had been smuggling the works to safety in cars, carts and canoes, often hidden under crates of vegetables. It was a daring mission, and you can read more of their brave endeavour in the BBC story HERE.

And so this brings me back to the title of this piece: doorway to the past, and to the question I feel bound to ask myself: Just how much of the history of the African continent has either been destroyed – wilfully by invaders, including slavers and European colonists, or lost through the relentless shifting of the Sahara’s sands, and other forms of climate change. The stories we mostly hear out of Africa are of conflict, corruption and poverty. Stories that celebrate the creativity, durability, ingenuity, culture and wisdom of African peoples are not news. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that most of us in Europe were living in mud huts through the centuries when the great African kingdoms were thriving. Perhaps we should remember, too, that civilizations come and go, and our own Western Civilization is not immune from departure.

Door

Bird’s Eye View of Shela Village, Lamu

This week at Thursday’s Special, Paula has asked us to interpret ‘a bird’s eye view’. I’m not sure that four storeys up in Shela’s Island Hotel quite constitutes a bird’s eye view, but it’s as high as I’m going. I’ve written about our stay on Lamu in other posts. One thing I will say here is that we had a room that was ideal for someone as nosy as I am. Three sides were entirely available for nosiness, overlooking the centre of the village. I didn’t know which way to look first.

In the next photo you can see the village square with its donkey park under the thorn tree. There was only one vehicle on Lamu at the time of our visit – an aged Land Rover, and donkeys were used for all forms of land transportation. They were left under the tree until someone needed one to move something. In the bottom corner you can see blocks of quarried coral rag used for house building.

Please visit Paula at Thursday’s Special for more views.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge