The mysterious mosque

“Kipungani village is very old,” says Mohamed Islam.

“How old?” I ask.

“Very old. My great great grandfather came here from Yemen and married here. So it’s very old.”

As if to prove his point, we have reached the ruins of the coral rag mosque standing next to a clear water creek by the village.

“This mosque was built about 400 years ago but was never completed,” he says. “So it was never used.”

I step into the mosque carpeted with a thick layer of dry leaves which crackle under my feet. A fat baobab grows in the centre of the mosque which is covered with shrubs growing in its midst.

Even though the mosque is slowly falling apart, you can see where the kabla was, although only the foundations stand, pointing the direction to Mecca.

Opposite it is the ablution block where the men might have washed themselves before prayers. It all seems so mysterious why a nearly completed mosque was abandoned.

Kipungani village is quaint. Situated on the edge of the channel, the village stands on the remote southwestern tip of Lamu island, sheltered by clear water creeks and thick mangrove forests. Simple coral rag houses straddle the narrow alleys of the village. Mohamed picks up a beautiful shell with its occupant in it.

“We crush the shells to make the lime to build the houses with.” We step inside the house of Sauda Mohamed. It’s cool with a simpler version of the famed wooden doors of the East African coast.

It’s morning and the men have left for the day out at sea. The village women are busy with the household chores with some like Hadija Abdalla returning from the fields with palm leaves to weave mats and thatch the roofs.

The Kipungani Explorer lodge, about half an hour’s walk away is built from their woven ‘mkekas’.

“We are about 300 people in the village but now we have others who are working in the lodges coming to rent accommodation,” says Mohamed.

I ask him how they feel about that.

“Good because it gives us some money,” he replies.

The village mosque stands in the middle with the wells around it.

“This mosque is older than the other one,” says Mohamed. Nevertheless, it looks newer but I presume that’s because it is looked after.

Colourful khangas washed in the morning flap in the gentle breeze. We reach the village school with its neat courtyard. The kids are out for the day because the teachers have been called for a meeting in Lamu town. Under an ancient tamarind tree, fat of girth and with about the widest canopy I have ever seen, shade the little girls playing under it.

“We make tamarind juice from the pods,” says Mohamed when I ask if it is used for anything.

The tamarind tree is an exotic tree and indigenous in countries in the east like India, giving credence to the point that the easterners did sail this far centuries ago.

Walking out of the village, we stop by a dhow being repaired.

“This stump of wood is used to shape the wooden planks of the dhow,” explains my guide.

However, once a thriving business in Kipungani and the neighbouring village of Matondoni where the master dhow makers come from, today dhows are only made by order and not for trading but more for the tourist industry to take clients on leisurely sails along the creeks and channels.

Walking towards Kipungani Explorer, we meet Mohamed Athman collecting his fish trap or the uziyo made of coconut leaves in the channel.

During high tide, the fish swim into the trap and get stranded at low tide making it easy for the fishermen to collect their harvest. But the catch hasn’t been too good because the water is too warm, explains the fisherman.

Back at the lodge, we try our luck at crab catching and sail along the creek with our crab man, Siaka Salim. There are thousands of tiny crabs rushing out of the water with their large pincers but the big ones elude us.

“It’s the tide, it’s too high now,” the crab man says and jumps out of the boat with his crab-catching net.

A sail away, a beautiful Goliath heron swiftly descends by the edge of the mangrove trees their roots standing out of the water and loaded with oysters. The Goliath heron is the world’s largest heron and easily stands at over five feet.

As the sun sets, we settle in the dhow enjoying the leisurely sail along the channels. The sky darkens and the most star-filled sky appears above filled with constellations of the Milky Way.

Stepping out of the dhow into the water, the water is suddenly set aglow. It’s the phosphorescence from the plankton, the minute sea animals floating around absorbing the sunlight and releasing it when disturbed at night.

It’s one of nature’s marvels and on reading more about it, I learn that the study of phosphorescent materials led to the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 heralding the dawn of the nuclear age.Email: rupi.mangat@yahoo.com: http://rajuafrica.blogspot.com