Mombasa

Mombasa has been a port for well over a thousand years, its deep harbour making it one of the great towns of the Swahili coast, a chain of Muslim, Kiswahili-speaking city-states trading ivory, mangrove poles, grain and cloth with Arabia, the Gulf and India. Arab and Persian geographers mention it from the medieval period, and Ibn Battuta stopped here in the fourteenth century.

The Portuguese arrival changed everything. Mombasa resisted them, was sacked more than once, and from 1593 they built Fort Jesus above the harbour entrance to hold the coast. Omani Arab forces besieged the fort for nearly three years and took it in 1698, and the town then passed between Omani governors, the local Mazrui dynasty and the sultans of Zanzibar, changing hands so often that the fort itself was captured nine times.

Britain leased the coastal strip from the sultan of Zanzibar and in 1896 began the Uganda Railway at Mombasa, hiring thousands of Indian labourers whose descendants remain part of the city. The railway made the town the gateway to the interior and the port for a vast hinterland, though the capital moved inland to Nairobi in the early 1900s. The coastal strip joined independent Kenya only in 1963. Since then Mombasa has lived on its port — Kenya's only international seaport and the biggest in East Africa, handling cargo for Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and eastern Congo — and on tourism, while many residents have argued that the coast was sidelined by governments in Nairobi. The standard gauge railway to Nairobi opened in 2017, and the port has gone on expanding, with new berths built to raise its container capacity.

Mombasa is the largest Swahili city in Kenya, and Kiswahili in its coastal form is the language of the street, spoken with pride and a vocabulary richer in Arabic than in the interior. The island is mostly Muslim; the rhythm of prayer, Friday gatherings, Ramadan nights and Eid celebrations organises the week, and the mosques of the Old Town are among the oldest in the country.

Dress carries meaning. Men wear the white kanzu and embroidered kofia, especially on Fridays and at celebrations; women wear the black buibui, and the printed kanga, sold in pairs with a proverb along its border, is used as a wrap, a baby sling and a message. Weddings are long, musical and public affairs, and taarab — sung poetry over an orchestra of Arab, Indian and African instruments — is the music that belongs to them, alongside the modern coastal styles of chakacha and bongo flava from across the border.

The city is also a mixture beyond the Swahili: Mijikenda people from the hinterland, above all the Digo and Giriama; a long-established Indian community of Gujarati, Goan and Punjabi origin with Hindu temples and Jain and Ismaili halls; Arabs, and Kenyans from every inland county drawn by the port. Coastal manners are slower and more formal than Nairobi's — greetings first, patience expected, and modesty appreciated away from the beach.

Mombasa had about 1.2 million residents at the 2019 census, most of them living off the island in the mainland districts of Likoni, Changamwe, Kisauni and Jomvu. The port is the foundation of the economy, with shipping agents, clearing and forwarding firms, container yards, the oil terminal and the railway freight line employing many thousands; tourism, fishing, cement, salt and trade with the interior fill much of the rest.

The social geography is sharp. Nyali, Bamburi and parts of the island are comfortable and green; Likoni and Kisauni are crowded, cheaper and under-served, and the Likoni ferry, which carries a very large number of foot passengers each day, is the artery between them. Youth unemployment is high, and a long-standing sense that the coast has not shared in the wealth its port generates runs through local politics.

The day begins before the heat, with the fish landing and the markets at their busiest in the early morning. Afternoons are slow, shops shut for a while, and the city revives at dusk, when families walk the Mama Ngina waterfront, the food stalls open and the evening breeze comes off the sea. Tourism is sharply seasonal, peaking at Christmas and in August, and the rains of April and May are the quiet months.

Mombasa's cooking is the richest in Kenya, built on coconut, rice, seafood and the spices of the Indian Ocean trade. Pilau, rice cooked with cumin, cloves and cardamom, and biryani, layered with spiced meat and fried onion, are the feast dishes. Fish, prawns, crab and octopus come in coconut curries or grilled over charcoal, and wali wa nazi — rice cooked in coconut milk — accompanies almost everything.

Breakfast is mahamri, lightly sweet triangular buns made with coconut milk and cardamom, eaten with mbaazi, pigeon peas stewed in coconut. Street food means viazi karai, potatoes fried in a spiced batter and served with tamarind chutney; mishkaki, marinated meat skewers grilled at the roadside in the evening; bhajia; and mkate wa mayai, a thin dough folded around egg and minced meat. Cassava crisps and grilled maize are sold everywhere.

Sweets follow the Swahili and Indian heritage: kaimati, small fried dumplings in syrup; halwa, dense and fragrant; and kashata made with coconut or peanuts. Kahawa chungu, strong bitter coffee spiced with ginger and cardamom, is poured from a long-spouted brass pot into tiny cups on the Old Town streets, often taken with a piece of halwa. Fresh coconut water, tamarind juice and the palm wine called mnazi are the local drinks, and mangoes, cashews and passion fruit fill the markets.