Interwoven Histories
Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin has housed twelve aesthetically elaborate mikeka from the Lamu Archipelago and the neighbouring Kenyan coast. Eight of them bear interwoven poetry in Kiswahili in Arabic script.
The trajectories of the mikeka as well as their poems bear witness to former political and social relations. Most of them have been brought to Berlin by Germans who played a significant role in international affairs in times of upheaval and are linked to a German colonial past in Witu on the mainland opposite Lamu Island.
For more than a hundred years, these mats have been muted in the storage rooms of the museum. Today, these mats’ messages reveal more than one story and inspire new relations.
