Foreign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
2013 Lamu Cultural Week. Unlike Maulidi, the annual ancient Swahili event celebrating birth of the Prophet Mohammed, Cultural Week is a tourist event celebrating of Lamu Old Town as a UNESCO World Heritage Site with more than 700 years of continuous settlement. And for better or worse that means no cars on the island. Organized […]
Pirate Management Written by Margot Kiser on 05 Sep, 2011 | Location: Tags: pirates , Somaliland 7 comments View comments. Leave a comment Farah Ismael Idle strutted into the press-packed conference room with the insouciance of a celebrity. A white prayer cap complemented a prison jumpsuit in yellow, a colour that in Somaliland’s Hargeisa prison […]
Art Forum Written by Margot Kiser on 29 Apr, 2011 | Location: Lamu | Column: Art Forum Tags: Fesitival , Herbert Menzer 6 comments View comments. Leave a comment Lamu Painters Festival—a funny idea realized Artists at work outside in the elements are often—correctly—labelled ‘street artists’ and pass their time sketching kitsch for tourists in […]
Salah is Islamic prayer worshipers practice five times a day – the way the worshipers hold their hands conveys to me humility and surrender. The intense look in that child’s eyes tells me I was intruding on a deeply intimate moment.
https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=4680918613205″ width=”1280″ height=”720″ frameborder=”0″> Maulidi is the Swahili (East African coast) traditional celebration of the birth of Prophet Muhammed. Muslims as far away as the Comoros and Zanzibar meet in Lamu, Kenya for the annual festival. Lamu Old Town is one of the oldest and best preserved Swahili settlements along African’s east coast, which UNESCO […]
In July 2012 the British High Commission donated a $100K high speed patrol boat to Lamu Administration police to help protect the Lamu Archipelago’s once pirate-infested waters between the fabled tourist destination and Somalia. The High Commission said it planned to donate a second boat to the Kenya Defense Forces. Whichever of the two boats […]
Read my award-winning Newsweek story about the tourist kidnappings. byliner.com/margot–kiser/stories/filter/award_winners Paradise revised. Difficult to imagine that anything bad can happen in a place this beautiful. Manda island, 2011 Glassy waters on approach to Marie Dedieu’s grass hut. Like fruit on an outdoor stand almost anyone living the Robinson Crusoe dream was ripe for the plucking. […]
Former Minister of Finance, Uhuru Kenyatta, spent time in Lamu over the weekend fundraising in his bid to become Kenya‘s next president. He resigned soon after the International Criminal Court at the Hague (ICC) accused him of playing a role in inciting the 2007 post election violence that resulted in the death of thousands of […]
I gave what I’m told was a great presentation about Somali piracy and “ruthless tactics of tourist kidnaps” at this anti-piracy conference held this time in Brussels. Hope to share with the experts what happened to our community, how will military forces better protect international waters, as well as get an idea of what security […]
