The Mysterious Ruins of Gedi in Kenya
A forgotten city in the forest of Kenya seems shrouded in a very ancient curse and fascinating history.
The town of Malindi, Kenya, is today considered one of Africa's paradises; with its dream coast in East Africa, it is a destination for the most demanding tourism. And yet, a few kilometers from its resorts, there is a mysterious little village, a ghost town with an imprecise past. These are the ruins of Gedi, the lost village. Gede means "precious" in the Oromo language. Enclosed in the heart of the Arabuko Sokoke forest and spread over 200,000 m², the ruins of Gedi constitute an enigma which is still not elucidated: no one knows their very ancient history, that of its inhabitants, nor the causes of their suddenly give up. No signs of battle or epidemics were found: the ruins suggest instead a rapid flight of residents. It seems that the natives of the region avoid these impenetrable ruins, perhaps out of fear of what happened in this ancient and mysterious place.
The crux of the whole enigma surrounding the lost city in the forest is that there are no written records of its existence: there is no record of it in Swahili culture. The Portuguese who arrived in this region and settled there, only a few kilometers away, were unaware of it.
Arab libraries do not hold any key that allows us to decipher this mystery. It seems that the ruins of Gedi have escaped centuries of history, in some kind of well-kept secret.
A campaign of excavations carried out between 1948 and 1958 gave surprising results. Hidden among the ruins, archaeologists discovered a Chinese vase from the Ming dynasty, precious glasses worked in Venice, an Indian-made iron lamp, Spanish scissors and coins from the Far East. All these objects, exhibited since 2000 in the small museum of the Gedi complex, seem to tell the story of a place where, in the past, merchants and travelers from all corners of the planet converged; a rich, vibrant and vital center of East Africa under Arab rule from 1300 to 1700 AD. According to archaeologists, at least 2,500 residents were allowed to live there.
According to the simplest hypothesis put forward by scientists, the great Arabuko Sokoke forest became a target of conquest during the migrations of the tribes that descended from the north and its inhabitants were then brutally driven out. According to another supposition, the city of Gedi was, on the contrary, the object of a punitive expedition launched by the city of Mombasa against Malindi.
But all this only reinforces the great mystery about the silence that enveloped the ruins for centuries: how can it be that a center of commerce so rich, a city so extensive, a place where the great and mighty merchants of the past met, left no written traces in any travel journal? One would imagine that those who ventured into the ancient village of Gedi were bound to respect a pact of silence. Moreover, its remoteness from the ocean and its location inside the forest do not constitute ideal conditions for a trading center. And it further thickens the mystery surrounding what the people of Gedi were trading in, in great secrecy, and the motivations of their clients.
It remains for us to admire, today, the typical medieval Swahili architecture which is at its peak in the construction of the palace, in the imposing stone houses and in the Grand Mosque. But the sophisticated, one-of-a-kind bathrooms are of great interest. The main material used in constructions comes from the oceanic coral reef. The city plan is drawn on intersections at right angles and includes a perfect urban network of drainage channels. Legend has it that the ruins would be protected by the spirits of its priests. The Ancients, as they are called, could curse anyone who attempted to desecrate the area.
