Lamu Cultural Festival

Lamu Cultural Festival is a celebration of both the past and the future, and the beliefs and traditions of the Lamu community.

If you have time, you should attend Lamu Cultural Festival once in your life time. Each year, Lamu comes to life during the annual Lamu Festival. Several competitions and races are staged during this week long festival.

Most tourist destinations the world over market themselves as an opportunity for travellers to “enter another world”. The island of Lamu, situated off the shores of Northern Kenya, can most certainly say it is possibly one of the strangest little islands in the world.

With over 700 years of continuous settlement, the Lamu Archipelago offers one of the rarest and exceptional historical living heritages on the African continent.

Lamu Cultural Festival is a celebration of both the past and the future, and the beliefs and traditions that are the heart and soul of the Lamu community.

Most visitors to the island fall in love with this relaxed and peaceful lifestyle, and visiting during the Lamu Cultural Festival is a chance to experience Lamu life at its most exuberant and joyous.

Each year, Lamu comes to life during the annual Lamu Cultural Festival. Several competitions and races are staged during this week long festival. These events are designed to each encourage local skills or practices that are central to Lamu life.

These include traditional Swahili poetry, Henna painting, Bao competition... Bao is probably the oldest known game in human history, with archaeological evidence suggesting that the game has been played throughout Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years.

In order to preserve and encourage the art of dhow sailing, now threatened by increasing availability of engines and prefabricated boats, a dhow race is also held.

The town’s finest dhows are selected to compete, and race under sail through a complicated series of buoys, combining speed with elaborate tacking and maneuvering skill.

Other events include swimming, and at times a challenging cross country race along the waterfront, all the way to Shela village and back- all in the physically draining heat of the day.

The real highlight of every festival involves the town’s most endearing symbol- the donkey race. Local donkey jockeys literally spend the entire year honing their riding skills for this event, and the winning rider wears his title with great pride.

Being a winning donkey jockey requires a specific set of skills. As with most such races, small physical stature is helpful, but keeping a stubborn donkey moving and on course requires a definite talent.

Lamu Cultural Festival is a celebration of both the past and the future, and the beliefs and traditions that are the heart and soul of this community.

Most visitors to the island fall in love with this relaxed and peaceful lifestyle, and visiting during the Lamu Cultural Festival is a chance to experience Lamu life at its most exuberant and joyous.

Other attractions include:

- Lamu Museum , exhibiting Swahili culture and the mainland's non-Swahili groups.

- Lamu Fort, dating back to 1821, having been built by the Sultan of Oman shortly after Lamu's victory over Pate and Mombasa in the battle of Shela.

- German Post Office Museum

- Swahili House Museum

- Takwa National Monument on Manda Island (a settlement dating back to AD 1500, with ruins of a Great Mosque and a pillar tomb)

- Ruins of Shanga, an 8th century Swahili settlement, on Pate Island, containing remains of the coral walls of 160 houses, two palaces, three mosques and hundreds of tombs.

- The early Swahili settlement of Pate, once a power in the region.

- Numerous sites and monuments that showcase Swahili civilization at its height in the 15th century.

- Donkey sanctuary for the old beasts of burden.

- The dhow making village of Matondoni

Come and experience the beauty and traditions of this mystical, exotic and serene archipelago.

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