Mafia Island

Mafia has been part of the Indian Ocean trading world for well over a thousand years. Pottery and coins found on the islands link them to the Persian Gulf and to the wider Swahili coast, and the archipelago lay on the sailing route between the Rufiji delta, Kilwa and Zanzibar, supplying mangrove poles, dried fish, rice and slaves to markets further north. The most important settlement was not on Mafia itself but at Kua on Juani, a stone town of mosques, houses and tombs whose ruins still stand in the bush; it was abandoned in the early nineteenth century.

Chole, the small island in the bay, then became the centre of the archipelago's trade and government under the influence of Zanzibar, and the roofless coral-stone houses and customs building there date from that period. Germany took control of the islands under a treaty of 1890 and built the offices, banks and courts whose shells still stand on Chole; the administration then shifted to Kilindoni, whose deeper water and open western beach suited larger boats, and Chole faded into a village. British troops took Mafia in January 1915 and used it as a base for the air and sea attack on the German cruiser Königsberg in the Rufiji delta.

Under British rule and after independence the islands stayed a quiet rural district living on coconuts, cashews and fishing. The creation of the Mafia Island Marine Park in 1995, covering the bay, the southern reefs and the inhabited islands within them, brought new rules for fishing and the beginnings of a small tourist economy built on diving and, more recently, on the whale sharks that feed off the west coast.

Mafia is Swahili and Muslim, and the rhythm of island life follows the mosque and the tide. Kiswahili is spoken everywhere, in a coastal form close to that of Zanzibar, and the call to prayer marks the day in every village. Friday empties the fields and the boats for midday prayers, Ramadan changes the hours of work and eating, and the two Eids are the great celebrations, with new clothes, visits between families and food shared across the village.

Manners are those of the coast, and formal by mainland standards. Greetings are long and come before any request, elders are addressed with shikamoo, and modest dress is expected in the villages even where visitors on the lodge beaches are dressed otherwise. Photography of people and houses is best asked about first, particularly on Chole and in the smaller settlements.

The making and sailing of boats is the island's most visible craft. Dhows and smaller outriggers are still built and repaired on the beaches of Chole and along the Kilindoni shore, and sailing, fishing and the reading of tides are common knowledge rather than specialist skills. Music and dance follow coastal forms — taarab and the drumming of ngoma at weddings — and the conservation rules of the marine park, which limit where and how people may fish, remain a live subject of local argument.

More than 65,000 people live in Mafia District, spread between Kilindoni and a scatter of villages across the main island, with about 1,500 on Chole and smaller numbers on Juani and Jibondo. Kilindoni holds the district offices, the market, the secondary schools, the hospital and the airstrip, and is where people come for banking, paperwork and anything that cannot be bought in a village shop.

The economy rests on fishing, coconuts and cashews. Fishing supports the largest number of households, from small sailing boats working the reefs to the traders who dry and salt the catch for the mainland, and coconut palms cover much of the island, producing copra and oil alongside cashew nuts, cassava, rice and fruit. Seaweed farming on the tidal flats adds cash income, and tourism employs a modest number of people in the lodges, dive centres and boats of the south-east.

The day begins before dawn with the tide and the boats and slows through the hot middle hours. Electricity, water supply and the state of the roads are recurring concerns, transport to the mainland depends on small aircraft and on boats that weather can stop, and the balance between the fishing rules of the marine park and the needs of the villages inside it is the island's longest-running dispute.

Island cooking is coastal Swahili cooking, built on fish, coconut and rice. The catch — reef fish, kingfish, octopus and prawns — is grilled over charcoal or cooked in coconut sauce, and pweza wa nazi, octopus simmered in coconut milk with lime and spices, is the dish most associated with these islands. Wali wa nazi, rice cooked in coconut milk, is the usual accompaniment, and mchuzi, a thin spiced stew, is spooned over it.

Away from the sea the staples are cassava, rice and bananas, eaten with beans and greens, and ugali, the stiff maize porridge of the mainland, appears on tables here too. Coconut runs through everything: grated into relishes, pressed for milk, drunk fresh from the green nut, and burned as fuel. Cashew nuts are grown across the island and roasted and salted for sale, and mango, jackfruit, breadfruit and papaya ripen in the village plots.

Breakfast is chai, spiced with cardamom or ginger and heavily sweetened, with mandazi, lightly sweet fried dough, or vitumbua, small fried rice cakes. Chapati and samosas are sold at the market and by the roadside, and chipsi mayai, chips cooked into an omelette, is the standard cheap meal in Kilindoni. Alcohol is little seen outside the lodges, and fresh juice, soda and coconut water are what people drink in the heat.