The Dhow as cultural icon
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
A person strolling through Zanzibar’s historic Stone Town would hardly be able to walk ten
minutes without running into a dhow reference of some sort. There is a Dhow Palace Hotel
that was, until the opening of the Serena, the island’s most posh hotel. There are “Dhow”
restaurants. Shops catering to tourists sell dhow tee shirts and post cards and models of
dhows exhibiting varying degrees of workmanship. One of the dive shops takes its customers
out in a motor dhow. The new House of Wonders Museum has as its centerpiece a full size
dhow, which is surrounded by numerous models of other vessels and displays about the
history of maritime trade in East Africa. The biggest cultural event of the year in Zanzibar is
the Dhow Countries Festival, a cultural event that includes music, dance, visual arts, and
films that derive from the countries of the western Indian Ocean rim.
Farther north in the Kenyan city of Mombassa, the Tamarind Restaurant runs a
nightly cruise around the harbor in a dhow that has been fitted out as a floating restaurant.
Tourists in Mombassa often visit the dhow harbor. On the island of Lamu the preferred way
to get to the beach is to hire a small dhow to carry you across to the island of Manda, where
you can have a drink at the Manda Beach Club whose bar (Fig. 1) is inside the hull of a
dismasted dhow set in concrete. [TRUNCATED]
Description
African Studies Center Working Paper No. 258
License
Copyright © 2008, by the author.