My doctoral research into pre-colonial African trade networks brought me to Lamu with a notebook and a vague feeling that I was going somewhere important.
Eye See Tour's heritage guide, Hassan, had grown up in the Old Town. He didn't give me a scripted tour — he took me to his grandmother's house, showed me the carved cedar door his great-grandfather had made, and introduced me to families who still spoke a dialect of coastal Swahili that predates colonial-era standardisation.
I extended my stay by a week. By the end, I had filled three notebooks and was eating fish curry for breakfast with people who felt like extended family. Academic research has never felt so alive.