Dhow Ride on Kilifi Creek - Kilifi, Kenya

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The following is a section of my expanded journal from my trip to Kenya in 10/00. The bit below describes a dhow ride in Kilifi. I was travelling with my brother Jamie - who was and continues to be in the Peace Corps in Kenya (posted in Siakago).

So, here we were walking down the dirt road that led to the fishermen's part of the waterfront. As we walked down the last hill to the shore, a young Kenyan - maybe 19-years-old - starting walking with us and asking what we were up to. We told him we were looking for a dhow ride and he told us he was crew to a dhow and that he would introduce us to his captain.

My brother Jamie and I had been in the small coastal town of Kilifi for the last two days. It looked like we'd be moving on early the next morning, so we were hoping to get a dhow ride in before the sun went down and all the fishermen went home for the day.

Down by the waterfront were 10 or 12 young fishermen just hanging around, their work done for the day. The young man - I'll call him Green Beret because he was wearing a green Chi Guevara beret and I forget his name - took us to his captain. The captain was at least 10 years older than the rest of the men and had an aura of authority about him. His leg had a noticeable scar, and I wondered how one would get such a wound. The captain was very happy to take us out for a sail, and we started bargaining. Jamie bargained with his usual determination not to get ripped off. Eventually he talked the captain down from 1,500 shillings to 700 shillings for a 2-hour sail.

Then the captain, Green Beret, and another crewmember went off to get their boat, which was hidden among some vegetation around the bend from where we stood. We waited for about 10 minutes and started wondering what happened to them, when they rounded back again with their dhow in tow.

In my time on the coast I had seen three different types of dhows: small, medium, and large. All maintained the same basic look. Our dhow was the smallest I had seen: a sturdy wooden structure about the size and shape of a canoe, but with a big triangle-shaped sail held up with a wooden mast planted in the middle. That's it. Pretty basic, but very versatile and durable. The boat held Jamie and me as well as the captain and his crew - Green Beret and New Guy (as I'll call him, I forgot his name, too!).

Green Beret did not seem to have much responsibility on this sail except to translate the captain's instructions into English so we knew where to sit. That was our job on the sail: to sit where the captain told us. New Guy - who appeared to be about the same age as Green Beret and wore only running shorts - had the job of dealing with the sail while the captain called out orders and handled the tiller.

Off we went. We didn't actually get out to the ocean, just sailed around Kilifi Creek. The captain said it was getting too late to head out to the ocean and that the wind would be dying down soon. So we got a nice tour of Kilifi Creek and the boats moored there. There were all kinds of boats sitting out in the water, from other small fishing dhows pulled up on the shore, to nice sailing boats owned by the wealthy of Kilifi, to a giant safari dhow that took tourists groups for sails. There was also a large, rusty trade vessel from Somalia just sitting in the water near where we had first met up with the captain. Our captain told us that the ship was in Kilifi to sell the gas it had hauled down from Somalia. Apparently, gas is much cheaper in Somalia, so the trip is worth it. I just found it amazing that the rust bucket could have made it from Somalia to Kenya - it barely looked sea-worthy - much less carrying a load of gas all the way.

As we sailed around, our captain and crew told us, in broken English and roughly translated Swahili, about the goings-on in Kilifi - who owned what beautiful house (an Englishman, an Arab), what kind of people visited what resort (Italians visited the one just above the Somali ship), how the lack of tourists had affected Kilifi (very much, no tourists, no one to buy fish), and how the captain got the scar on his leg - from a shark attack. The captain even let Jamie and me handle the tiller, which was fun even though the captain could not hold back the occasional bit of laughter at our maritime skills. I even tried to tell the captain about my sailboat - a small 1977 sunfish called the Johnny-O - but something got lost in the translation.

The experience on the dhow was about the best thing I did while in Kenya. It was really enjoyable to hang out with locals and to learn about the area from the perspective of the dhow crew. Jamie had taken a dhow ride with some friends the last time he was in Mombasa. However, that trip was arranged through a resort and Jamie said he felt a bit silly and touristy as they tooled around in a large motorized dhow built for the tourist trade. I was just really pleased that we had spent the day on the beach and on the water, without being anywhere near a resort, or another traveler for that matter. Truly, that was what I wanted to do in Kenya, and this day came the closest to what I had imagined what Kenya would be like.

The sun was setting as we pulled into shore. We paid the captain and strolled away.


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