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Mpishi Hula Moshi


Food connects the global and local, past rituals and new technologies, personal and collective identities. Through making, sharing, and eating, food becomes a creative medium that redefines relationships between bodies, places, and time. This theme explores food as living heritage in Lamu, blending tradition and modernity.


Ways of living with the Lamu archipelago


The Lamu Archipelago is undergoing significant transformation, with various forces shaping its future. This theme examines the ongoing changes through multiple lenses, focusing on key topics such as the promises and challenges of the Blue Economy, shifts in local fisheries, the impact of climate change, and human-nature relations during times of crisis.


Mama na Bahari


Women play an integral role in Lamu's fishing industry, particularly through sustainable projects such as octopus closures. This theme delves into how women’s participation in these initiatives reshapes community dynamics and social identities. By engaging in sustainable practices, they not only impact local economies but also influence perceptions of gender roles within the broader fishing industry.

Ng'amba: Maji yakishamwagika hayazoleki tena


The environmental and social impacts of plastic waste can be seen through the lived experiences of locals in Lamu. This theme explores their challenges in managing plastic waste, including local initiatives for recycling PET plastics, and highlights the broader economic inequalities that complicate these efforts.
 

Lamu's drainage system


As Lamu expands, older drainage systems have struggled to keep up, while new developments lack proper infrastructure altogether. This topic delves into how these issues affect both the island's residents and its growing economy, exploring the need for better planning and maintenance as Lamu continues to develop. 


Ecologies of belonging


Due to the LAPSSET Corridor, the Lamu region is anticipating massive urban growth on the mainland. Yet much of this has yet to materialise. Meanwhile, Lamu island is experiencing its own construction boom. This theme explores how home-building is tied to people’s sense of belonging and to the broader ecology of the region.


Maritime Mobilities


The new port promises future economic prosperity fueled by the smooth transportation of goods and people. But Lamu has been a regional and global node of trade for centuries, and mobility continues to be central to people’s lives. Our work focuses on the relationship between people’s ability to move and their ability to sustain themselves. 


Urban Stories of Displacement


LAPSSET’s promise of infrastructure-led development reactivates histories of displacement and forced resettlement in Lamu. This theme explores how these memories and hopes of return are shared and how they impact political claims to address historical and ongoing injustices.


Heritage under Transformation


Lamu town has experienced significant urban growth since its inscription on the World Heritage List in 2001. This theme focuses on the ways in which Lamu negotiates the complex relationship between heritage preservation, changing domestic cultures, and new architectural and urban development. 


Security Urbanism


The Lamu region has suffered insecurity since the Shifta War. Current counter-terror securitisation is focused not only on infrastructure and construction sites but also on tourist and transport hubs. This theme explores the impact of securitisation on everyday life.

Mpishi Hula Moshi



How is food a creative medium that articulates Lamu’s oscillating relationships between bodies, places, and time?



Authors:
Nusrat Ahmed Ali 
Umi Haroun
Marie-Jean Malek
Olga Voiushina
Oliver Frayne


A proverb from Lamu, which translates as "the cook eats smoke”highlights the hardship work and the fact that the fruits of cook’s labor are for others.

The research traces the stories of food on Lamu Island, where different actors use food as a method to navigate daily challenges, leverage their status, and highlight gender advantages and social connections, hence exploring new business opportunities.


Food has become a technology to access earning opportunities for those previously left out, hence reimagining and recreating urban spaces.


Conversely, we examine how this access shapes the uniqueness of Lamu's food culture, fostering value exchange both materially and culturally. This sustains a connection to traditions while providing hope for a future that may or may not be tied to the food business.






Projects


Mpishi Hula Moshi #2401

Mpishi Hula Moshi

Lamu, 2024

Marie-Jean Malek
Olga Voiushina

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Food Methodologiee

With a diverse group of five researchers differing in age, gender, and cultural background, we began by reflecting on our positionality as individuals from various parts of the world. Starting with a simple task of cooking and sharing meals together as team members, food preparation and consumption initiated our journey in order to better connect and understand each other and the focus of our research. This approach aimed to immerse ourselves in the local culinary practices and traditions, by reflecting on our position as external observers, and depending on our sensory perceptions shaped by the immediate surroundings, to guide and inform our interpretations. The practice of collaborative research has allowed us to better "cook" our research interest, which lies in understanding how food, as an absolute good for all living organisms, acquires practices in a social environment that vary from culture to culture.


Lamu Foodscape journey: Mapping Six Weeks of Food Stories

Lamu Foodscape

Foodscape is defined by the food practices that create the character of a place. As we were collecting food stories, a map of our research path was developed covering the stories of recipes, ingredients, tools, challenges, and opportunities embodied in the processes of preparing, selling, sharing, and eating food on a daily basis.



Lamu Food Stories

Farzana’s Story - A Space for Aspiration



Farzana’s kitchen is a cramped, three-square-metre space with no windows or ventilation. It serves as both a workspace for household duties and a small business, with shelves packed with tools for every cooking need. Her equipment blends traditional and modern: a multi-cooker for speed, a gas oven for power cuts, and a charcoal burner as a backup. Limited by space, her tools spill into other rooms.



For Farzana, cooking is both a duty and a creative outlet. She personalizes meals with secret ingredients, adapts broken tools, and tries TikTok-inspired recipes. Cooking lets her care for her family’s health and gives her a rare space for self-expression, constrained by cultural traditions in Lamu. Her investment in modern tools reflects her desire to ease her domestic load and expand her small food business from home, symbolizing a broader tension between tradition and modernity where personal and professional aspirations meet.

The dual pursuit - seeking efficiency in household chores while aspiring to economic activities centered on the home space reflects a larger picture in Lamu - a nuanced balance between tradition and modernity, and a negotiation of space where personal and professional aspirations converge.




Biryani Night - 
The Story of Many Hands for One Dish



In our journey to unveil the different scales and spaces of food-making, the preparation of wedding food marks a traditional festivity rich with socio-cultural stories and connections. In a one-night setup to prepare biryani, a traditional wedding meal, a whole, often invisible social infrastructure comes to life, where private and commercial aspects merge while maintaining the societal hierarchy. In this setup, the top supervisory roles were held by the adult men of the family, who oversaw the preparations.  
Below them were two paid chefs from Mombasa, assisted by younger male family members or, in wealthier families, hired helpers. The most basic tasks were assigned to women, who were close family members or friends. Biryani preparation becomes a rare and valuable opportunity for women to connect and socialize away from their daily lives, which are shaped by strict social norms and extensive domestic responsibilities.

Thus, the community hall transforms into a space for women to breathe, engage in self-making, and bond socially through chanting, dancing, and small conversations around food trays.





A Recipe’s Story -
‘Lost Recipes, Lost Connections’





With our desire to explore Lamu's traditional dishes through hands-on learning, we focused on local, typical ingredients that require simple preparation. Bananas, coconut, and sugar seemed simple in theory but led us to discover the creativity and variety employed by locals to create two distinct dishes: Mazu (or Ndizi za Nazi), a familiar dessert for Lamu residents, and Mboko, a fading recipe at risk of being forgotten

What began as a goal to exchange knowledge, practices, food, and joy within our group evolved into recording one of many unwritten food archives that are gradually disappearing, along with the stories of the women who invented and once cooked these dishes.





Asma’s Story -
A Space of Experimentation


Carrying on her family’s heritage in the food business and driven by a desire to have a self-independent work, Asma—fondly known as “Mama Ntilie” by those who visit her small outdoor kitchen—introduces a new dimension of Lamu food stories.


For 24 years, her corner of the street witnessed her innovations in Lamu food business, demonstrated by the arrangement of her cooking platform to accommodate both the family business and her customers’ needs.




The display of her cooking tools, the preparation of jiko for a live cooking experience, and the promotion of various homemade dishes on her small table—some made by other women in the family— all contribute to transforming the place into a warm and comfortable dine-in experience for repeated customers, embodying the genuine warmth and hospitality of a true  ‘Mama Ntilie’.



Fahita’s Story -
A Space of Resilience





We have come to Fahita to learn more about her mahamri, by some accounts the best mahamri in town. In a quiet, narrow alley blackened from years of wood smoke is where Fahita makes the mahamri each day. She buys the ingredients from the same place—she has her person. She cuts and shapes them here, but the dough is mixed off-site at her in-laws' shop, where they have a standing mixer suitable for larger amounts of dough needed for her small mahamri business. 

We learn that one aspect that makes this mahamri popular is that they taste, look, and feel homemade—something lost in the commercialized baking.


As we observe the steps of mahamri-making, it starts inside the house, from shaping the triangular mahamri, rolling a small disc, and cutting it into quarters, which are then stacked and set aside. Fahita then moves outside to her usual corner to start the frying. As she begins frying she becomes even quiet. The dough triangles are tossed into the oil; they inflate and become a dark orange-gold before being turned out into a colander to drain off excess oil. Fahita says a small prayer each time she fries another batch. We depart with hot mahamri wrapped in newspaper advertising discounts on electronics.



Exhibition

The stories and characters featured on the page became part of an exhibition at The Lamu Fort Museum, where the collaborative work was shared with the people of Lamu. A folded map served as a key to the exhibit, allowing visitors to journey from story to story - not only within the exhibition but also to discover these places and people throughout the city. 



By gathering recipes, stories, and symbolic objects, the exhibition aimed to show how food bridges the global and local, uniting past traditions with modern technologies, personal expressions with collective identities.

Through preparing, sharing, and enjoying food, it becomes a creative medium that reimagines the connections between bodies, places, and time.