Tag: Lamu
Best and worst of 2019 – 1
January 2019 did not kick off to a good start for me. I couldn’t walk, for one thing. The previous November I fell hard on my knee, not realising I’d torn my meniscus–a cartilage that acts as a cushion between the tibia and femur. Instead of getting an MRI when in Nairobi, where I fell, […]
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2019 in images
Herbert Menzer is one of the great connectors and influencers on Lamu Island. Herbert hails from Hamburg, Germany, and over the years has constructed several large, luxurious, modern Swahili rental villas in Shela village. He’s also the mastermind behind the annual Lamu Hat Contest, and The Painters Festival. Both will be held February 1-16, 2020. […]
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Unintended Consequences: A Fitness App Reveals a Secret US Military Base in Kenya
Fitness tracking Strava App reveals outlines of secret US bases (because people jog around the perimeter) around the world and as well as potentially sensitive information about military personnel on active duty. Here’s what US Forward Operating Base Camp Simba in Lamu County, Kenya looks like. The long vertical line in red is Camp Simba’s […]
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Living The Island Dream
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Lamu County votes 2017
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Geographical Doppelgänger
Portugal hardly ever seems in the news. I never gave the little country next to Spain much thought. Recently, however, a writer friend of mine and his wife first told me about Algarve, a largely undiscovered coastal region of Portugal. I haven’t seen refugees from North Africa or the Middle East yet. However, I guess […]
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Curfew in Paradise
I hadn’t been back to Lamu since early July, shortly after the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for massacring up to 60 people in villages on the mainland. A businessman from a well Koen political family whom I’d met in Nairobi for the first time recently winced when I told him I spend a […]
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Mpekatoni – Hindi
Mpekatoni is a small town in Lamu County on Kenya’s north coast. When initial reports came out of an attack that eventually left up to fifty dead, the international community thought it had occurred in or near Lamu Old Town on Lamu island. Mpekatoni is in fact on the mainland about 30 kilometers by car […]
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Who Rules the Night? Notes on the Lamu security meeting
A security meeting was held in Lamu town yesterday attended by the new Lamu County Commissioner, Mirii Njenga, the County Chief of Security, various hoteliers and frightened residents. Local and foreign media were also present. Kenya’s armed forces have reportedly secured Mpekatoni and other villages on the mainland. The only thing that seems certain so […]
