Plan for Kenyan town imperils past

LAMU, Kenya -- This Indian Ocean town is a unique vestige of Swahili culture. The centuries-old stone dwellings are a reminder of Lamu's lost status as a beacon on one of the first great trade routes linking East Africa to the Far East.

Now, its people fear that a futuristic maritime project will wreck their historical legacy.

Last month, Kenya's Transport Ministry approved a $15 billion project to build the largest port in East Africa along the sandy strip of mainland across the water from Lamu, the same stretch where many islanders have for years kept family farms.

Yousef Abdul Aziz Al-Bader of Kuwait, the owner of Al-Bader International Development Corp., devised the project as the terminus for a planned oil pipeline and railway from Southern Sudan. There are also plans for a flashy resort city and oil refinery.

Lamu, politicians suggest, will be restored to its status of yore as East Africa's premier maritime hub, with infrastructure to boot. But the deal has raised questions about what the town will become and whether its people will have a say in the matter.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization describes Lamu as the oldest and best-preserved example of Swahili settlement in East Africa. Town residents are concerned that their heritage has been traded in for a grand notion of dubious benefit to them, orchestrated by a national government rated among the most corrupt in the world. They worry that a major port will destroy the sense of isolated serenity that has brought tourists here since the 1970s.

At a time when overseas investors are pumping billions of dollars into Africa's oil and mining industries, the port project illustrates all that is at stake when cash-strapped, often-corrupt African governments do business with foreign corporations in town for profit, not preservation.

So far, little of the money has filtered down to Africa's poorest people. While politicians in capitals across the continent continue to sell such development projects, people in Lamu are beginning to question whether the environmental and social costs are worth it.

Lamu is a rarity on a continent where so much of the past has been lost to natural scourges and opportunistic empires.

Once an independent city-state, Lamu parried the incursions of 15th-century Portuguese raiders, warring sultanates, even the British Empire. The island prospered as the intermediary in the trade of African ivory, mangrove, gold, and slaves for fine cloth, iron, frankincense, and dates from the East.

In many ways, the Lamu of today is no different from what it once was.

Each spring on the Prophet Mohammed's birthday, revered scholars travel from the nearby island of Pate to perform an old Swahili rendition of a classic days-long Maulid, or religious poem, in honor of the founder of Islam. Pilgrims from Sudan, Tanzania, Congo, Uganda, and Zanzibar attend.

And each afternoon, dozens of donkeys, left to wander free unless they are needed for work, trot unbidden along the town's narrow alleyways to their owners' homes for supper, just as they have for centuries. Seven camels and one dirt bike present the only transportation alternative on the island. There are no cars.

There's also no money -- at least not for the average citizen.

When a boat carrying a handful of tourists arrives at the dilapidated jetty, desperate boys and old women wrapped in hijabs throng the waterfront hawking trinkets, boat rides, and tours of the premier heritage site that they can no longer afford to live in. Open sewers run down the narrow alleys, and rolling blackouts stultify commerce.

"This happens very often," Ahmed Hemed, Lamu's county clerk, explained recently as the power failed and the ceiling fan in his office drifted to a stop. The town's decrepit generators are overburdened. "I think the port will be a very helpful development for Lamu. There are definitely economic considerations."

Many of the families that have lived here for centuries are leaving in search of education and jobs. Few deny that Lamu needs to change, but question whether the port project is the right way.

As the first call to evening prayer rang out, Mohammed Ali Athaman fretted about the future. Athaman, 44, whose house has been in the family for more than 800 years, fears for his townspeople.

"The Lamu people are going to disappear and the only thing that will stand here are the buildings," said Athaman, who owns a hotel in Lamu. "How can we get a job? Some job to go and carry a sack of sugar? We stay the same -- a poor guy every day."

Under the only publicized version of the proposal, Bader will hold exclusive rights to operate and develop the port, with full discretion to select contractors. In July, letters from the office of Kenya's solicitor general questioned the fairness of such a deal for Kenya as well as the legitimacy of the procurement process for the project.

Representatives from the Kuwaiti company and Kenya's Ministry of Transport visited Lamu and met with the local county council for half an hour last spring but the participants have not been in contact since.

Al-Bader International Development and the Ministry of Transport did not answer repeated requests for comment.

Patricia Romero, a professor of African history at Towson University in Maryland who has written a book about Lamu, said the port would give local people jobs they urgently need.

"But it will bring tons of others in and many of them will have no interest in Lamu's cultural heritage or perhaps even the old stone dwellings," she said.