WHAT IS ZINJ?

A mythical land; an ancient paleontological find; a once important, but long forgotten player in Indian Ocean history; a cultural connection; a warm, humid, tropical strip of East African coastline where limpid, turquoise waters lap coconut strewn, white sand beaches; a little workshop in a tiny coastal village in Kenya, where an unlikely couple strive to make work and trade change local lives.  A place where African ingenuity is allowed to flourish and beautiful African bead and leather creations are brought to bear . . . .
Named in the Periplus, AD50, describing the trade links between Arabia, Asia and the East African coast, The Land of Zinj was the name given by the Arabs to the coastal area between Southern Somalia and Northern Mozambique, when they first began to settle around 500AD. And it has been this process of trade and cultural interrelations between Arab, Asian and the indigenous Bantu people that has given this coast its unique and fascinating character ever since.

The village of Takaungu – or ‘Takaungu Trading Centre’ as it is known on official documents -  lies at the heart of this cultural exchange:  homeland to the indigenous Giriama people who have farmed and fished here for millennia;  family seat of the Mazrui family, the Omani rulers of Zinj for over two hundred years, who originally settled Takaungu as slave traders; and home, for the last two hundred years, to Swahili families whose traditional livelihoods of trade and fishing continue to give them strong links to Lamu, Pemba island and beyond.  

Takaungu was also once the home of a strong Bohra community, whose large and beautiful mosque in the very centre of the dusty village is now only visited by the one remaining member of the community, who is also owner of the main village hardware, grocers, haberdashery and ‘just about everything in one’ shop.  All the other Bohra have long migrated to Mombasa, Nairobi, London and beyond in endless pursuit of education, professions, money and the modern world.  The image of  the octogenarian Mzee Mohammedali in his kanzu and distinctive Bohra kofia as he shuffles down the village street every evening for prayers, clasping a huge old key in his hand to let himself - all alone - into a mosque built for hundreds, is perhaps one of the most poignantly symbolic images of Zinj today: dusty, dishevelled, forgotten, insignificant, tenacious, resilient, enduring . . . .





Bohra: Dawoodi Bohras, the community most prevalent on the E. African coast, are a subsect of Shia Islam originating from a 16th century schism. Dawoodi Bohras have a blend of cultures, including Yemeni, Egyptian, African, and Indian. They have their own language which is derived from Urdu, Gujarati and Persian.


Kanzu: a long white garment traditionally worn by Muslim men for prayers, especially on Fridays and special holy days


Kofia: the traditional round ‘pillbox’ cap worn by Muslim men with their kanzus. While the majority Sunni Muslims of the E. African coast wear kofias in a wide variety of patterns and colours, the Bohra sect all use a particular white and gold one.