Geography

---

For those of you who haven't been there yet: Manuel Alexander School (M.A.S.), Heshima Primary School (HPS), Likunda Primary School (L.P.S.) and Lulu High School (L.H.S.) are situated in the neighbourhood of Ukunda, a small town approx. 50 km south of Mombasa, the capital of the South Coast. All those places are in Kenya, of course.

Manuel Alexander School

 

We owe this arial view to the bravery of Carsten, a friend and supporter of the project. Armed with two cameras he forced himself into an ultra-light plane (as a passenger, of course) and circled the skies of Diani for about 30 minutes. What a dare-devil!

While M.A.S. and H.P.S. are located in Diani Beach, L.P.S. and L.H.S. are approx. 20 km away from Dinai Beach close to a market-place called Mabungo, on the main road from Ukunda to Lunga Lunga at the Tanzanian boarder.  The distance between the plots and the main road is around 100 m, so traffic noise can hardly be heard. Ukunda, which is where most of the local people live, is only a few minutes walking distance away from Mabungo, so many parents can save on expensive school transport bills. Families who live further away find the boarding facilities of L.P.S. and L.H.S. most attractive.

The region is the home of the Muslim tribe of the Digo. Due to the booming tourism, people from all over Kenya have been attracted to this area, so that in the meantime all tribes are to be found on the southern coast. East Africa owes the (Ki-)Swahili language to the South Coast, which was the result of the mixture of the languages of the Arabs, the local people and the Portuguese. Swahili derives from the Arabic word sahel meaning coast.

The Digo are peaceful fishing folk. Unfortunately, however, they were caught on the wrong foot by the boom of tourism, so the most lucrative real-estate and businesses are mostly in hands of the so-called up-country people. Useless villains (they prefer to call themselves "politicians") for some reason make use of this imbalance of wealth (greed one could call it) to plot and ploy for hostilities. Luckily, the people of the South Coast are not only peaceful but also friendly, and the frictions end without too much harm being done.

For most of the Wazungu (white people) it is rather difficult to distinguish the different tribes at a glance. Yet it is often quite easy to recognise which tribe they belong to when seeing their family name written. A few examples: The names of the Taita usually begin with "Mw...", those of the Meru with "Mu...", of the Kikuyu with "Ng...", those of the Digo end with "o", and so on.

Thanks to the new media, our four schools may be traced through Google Earth or with Google Maps. If you have Google Earth installed, click on one of the links in the 1st row below. Otherwise, just click on the Google Maps links in the 2nd row and see the results (from a slightly higher altitude) in a new browser window.

 

Größere Kartenansicht

 

---

back to the top

© Watoto e.V. 2008