Cultural Relevance

During our trip with the Liti's we will be 100% in Kenyan culture. We will be sleeping in African homes, traveling with Africans, eating their food, being around mainly only Swahili vs. English, driving with a Kenyan in itself is going to be cultural. 
We will be spending this next week with just Kenyans. We are going to travel around to see more of the country. We will meet Massai people at Amboseli and see the landscape that they come from.

Mombasa is the second largest city in Kenya next to Nairobi. Its considered the 'coastal capital'. It was originally founded by Arabs and Islam spread throughout the city. The first Swahili speakers originated at Mombasa. In the 16th century the Portuguese settled and built Fort Jesus in the early 1500's as a military refuge. In the 1900's when the British colonized Kenya they used Fort Jesus as a prision. Mombasa was key to expanding trade throughout the Indian ocean and its main exports were ivory, millet, sesamum, and coconuts.
Mombasa has a lot more in depth history that you can read about HERE. 


Malindi has been a Swahili settlement since the 14th century, it used to compete with Mombasa to have dominance in East Africa as far as trading went. A lot of the original buildings are architecture are still there in Malindi and we will get to see all of that. 


The coast of Kenya is packed with history and cultural relevance and during this time we will get to really see the culture and dive into the depths and history of the founding and settlement of Kenya. We will see the roots of Swahili and the trading system as it evolved over the centuries. It is going to be wonderful! And we will get a really good feel for this culture and language. 


See ya'll in a week.