Kiwayu Safari Village is located on the Kenya mainland in the most remote Dodori National Reserve about 30 miles north of Lamu Island, in a breathtakingly beautiful bay opposite Kiwayu Island.
Nestling amid the mainland dunes, the oasis of Kiwayu Safari Village lies to the north of a sheltered lagoon off the island of Kiwayu. There are few places in the world and Africa hotels, which can boast such total seclusion, visited only by fishermen, the dhow that still come to collect sweet water and the occasional sports fisherman in search of the magnificent marlin or sail fish.
Kiwayu is surrounded by a Marine Reserve, protected by the Kenya Wildlife Services and to the north and west, the adjacent Dodori and Boni Game Reserves. These wild areas are vital to the protection of the fauna and flora of eastern Kenya.
Animals inhabiting these reserves are often migratory such as elephant and buffalo. The permanent residents are lion, cheetah, serval, caracal, lesser kudu and that rare hunting dog. (Apart from the monkeys, of course!).
The sea is home to many types of coral fish, dugongs, whale shark, basking whale, tuna, marlin, sail fish, wahoo, kingfish and many other sports fish and edible species. The turtle lay their eggs on the sandy beaches and together with Kenya Wildlife Services, their beat is avidly protected. Fishing trophies such as marlin and sailfish are released back into the sea.
Staff and boatmen are at guests service and meals are served on three different locations: bedroom/planetarium, beach house, and dining platform. The staff are invisible and two beaches are exclusively for guests.
Bajuni Tribe
The Bajuni are a Muslim tribe who have established settlements on islands in the Lamu Archipelago on the Coast of Kenya, and on islands northwards towards the border with Somalia. In recent years several villages on the mainland near Somalia have been abandoned and today Mkokoni is the most Northerly outpost of the small Bajuni tribe.
Throughout their range the Bajuni exist on fishing, though their villages are built in the few places where fresh water is available, so they grow coconuts and mangoes to supplement their diet. While the men labour at their fishing the women must, as usual, tend to their children and their homes, though they also cultivate small patches of millet and maize to try to take advantage of the two uncertain seasons of rain during the year.
Bajuni women dress in bright coloured traditional cotton kangas, though because of their poverty, their Swahili style jewellery is generally not spectacular. Some wear a small gold stud in their nose and in the past they stretched their ear lobes with plugs of buffalo horn, ebony, or tortoise shell. Their sole form of make up is kohl, a natural kind of black earth found in isolated places on beaches, and which is used as eye shadow.
At weddings they paint intricate patterns on their hands and feet using the ancient method of dying the skin with henna, the extract from the tamarind root. They sing eloquently at their festivities in time to drums played by their men.
