Kenya - Mombasa & Swahili

Mombasa is Kenya’s vibrant coastal city on the Indian Ocean. Home to the Swahili tribe in Kenya, one can visually see the influences left behind by more than twelve centuries of contact with Arab traders;  the mosques, the calling sound to player and the parade of Kaftans and Hijabs.

Swahili comes from the plural sawāḥil (سواحل) of the Arabic word sāḥil (ساحل), meaning "boundary" or "coast".  Swahili is a language adapted from Bantu and enriched with vocabulary from the Arabic (35%), Portuguese and Hindi Languages.  Swahili is the national language of both Kenya and Tanzania and is also spoken widely across other Eastern and Central African countries. From the Comoros islands, Zanzibar, Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and southern coastal Somalia.

The Swahili tribe are coastal people with very rich historical and cultural heritage.  Some of the earliest inhabitants of the East African coast were their ancestors, Cushitic herdsmen. The Cushitic people were joined by Bantu speaking tribes.  Other groups later migrated to this coastline, including Arab, Hindi, Portuguese, and Indonesian traders. They, too, intermarried with the indigenous people, giving rise to a new culture, people and language.

The Arabic culture though has had the greatest influence in shaping Swahili traditions. One major legacy of the Arab culture is the prevalence of the Islamic religion among the Swahili people. Swahili children, for example, must attend Madrassa - religious classes in which they study the Koran and learn the Arabic language -from an early age.

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