|
| |
|
SIYU |
| |
|
|
| |
The path from Pate to Siyu is a slightly tricky eight kilometres.
Having set off in the right direction, the first half-hour is fairly
straightforward; if in doubt, bear right. You come to a crossroads (easily
missed unless you look backwards) and turn right. This narrow red dirt
path soon broadens into a track known as the barabara ya gari (the
"motor highway" - there was once a car); it takes you to a normally dry
tidal inlet where you veer left a little before continuing straight on
through thick bush for another hour to reach Siyu.
Wherever the bush on either side is high enough you may come across
gigantic spiders' webs strung across the path. The matching spiders are
brightly coloured, non-hairy, and merely waiting for insects, but they
are nevertheless intimidating. Fortunately, they have the sense to build
their webs high up and well out of the way. SIYU is even less well
documented than Pate. Still less accessible by sea, the town was a
flourishing and unsuspected centre of Islamic scholarship from the
seventeenth to the nineteenth century and apparently something of a
sanctuary for Muslim intellectuals and craftsmen. While Lamu, Pate and
other trading towns were engaged in political rivalry and physical
skirmishing, Siyu never had its heart in commerce or maritime activities,
and never attracted much Portuguese attention. Instead, there was
enormous devotion to Koran-copying, book-making, text illumination , and
cottage industries like the woodcarving and leatherwork for which it's
still famous locally. Siyu sandals are said to be absolutely the best,
though plastic flip-flops have forced almost all the makers out of
business. Siyu carved doors are among the most beautiful of all Swahili
doors, with distinctive guilloche patterns and inlays of ground shell.
The sources of wealth and stability for Siyu's florescence are a little
mysterious, but the town's agricultural base obviously supported it well
and it was probably the largest settlement on the island in the early
nineteenth century, with up to 30,000 inhabitants. In 1873, the British
vice consul in Zanzibar could still describe it as "the pulse of the
whole district".
These days you wouldn't know it. Less than 4000 people live here, and
signs of the old brilliance are hard to find. Siyu lost its independence
and presumably much of its artistic flair when the sultan of Zanzibar's
Omani troops first occupied the fort in 1847 - though it was twenty
years before the Omanis were able to hold it for more than a brief spell.
Built in the early nineteenth century (no one knows for sure by whom),
Siyu Fort is the town's most striking building and indeed, in purely
monumental terms, the most imposing building on the whole island.
Substantially renovated, it is one of the few surviving traces of the
glory days. It's freely accessible, though watch out for dangers like
the well and the unstable walls. Around the outskirts of Siyu on the
south side are a number of quite impressive tombs . The big domed tomb
with porcelain niches dates from 1853.
Most of Siyu's houses today conform to the "open-box" plan typical of
the Kenyan coast: yellowish mud with a ridged makuti roof, open at each
end. These houses stand, each on its own, with no real streets to
connect them so, although it's larger than Pate, Siyu feels far more
like a village. The cultural isolation of these communities from each
other, a separateness which continues to this day, is easily appreciated
after arriving in Siyu from Pate. There are still few buibuis here, but
there's much less jewellery in evidence and the atmosphere is altogether
less severe.
For accommodation , it helps if you've had a word with the museum people
in Lamu.
|
| |
|
