KHOJA SHIA ITHNA-ASHERIS IN LAMU AND MOMBASA, 1870-1930
BY ZAHIR BHALLOO - PART THREE
“Chittilesso”
Hanging on a wall at the entrance of the Mombasa Club there used to be a superb black and white photograph of a sailing dhow. On the dhow’s stern, you could read the legend “W. RAMJI & SONS, LAMU, L.58”. The dhow belonged to old Walji Ramji a leading Ithna-Asheri piece-cloth merchant of Lamu. He arrived on the island in 1885 along with his brothers Molu Ramji and Damji Ramji.
The three brothers built up a flourishing business retailing and wholesaling cotton cloth. When they were tired of sitting in their shops they used to go door to door to make deliveries. They became famous under the name “chittilesso”, a name which is still remembered by old residents of Lamu to this day. (Chit is the Gujarati word for cotton and lesso is a type of cloth wrap around worn by Swahili women)
Life in Lamu
From Interviews with Hussein Abdalla Jaffer Pardhan (AP)
Life in Lamu in the 1930’s was very simple. People would wake up in the morning and go for prayers. They would open their shops from 8:00-12:00pm and then go home for lunch and to sleep. The shops would re-open again at 3:00pm until 6:00pm when people would go for maghrib prayers. After dinner some people would open their shops at half past eight to do book keeping until around 10:00pm when they would go to bed. The chairmen of the Jamaat in those days were Jaffer Panju, Hassan Walji, Molu Ramji and his brother Walji Ramji. Molu Ramji used to bring grain and other cargo from Mombasa and would export boriti (mangrove poles).
Yes I remember Daya Kanji. He had a big shop in Lamu and was also into bringing cargo from Mombasa and shipping boriti and copra. Daya Kanji’s agent Abdulrasul Hirji Walji stayed in Faza where he would buy boriti. The Bohra Adamali Nurbhai and the Parsi Cowasjee were also in Faza. They used to come to Lamu once every six months for a haircut.
There was no electricity in the mosque; we had to use kerosene lamps. The imambara was upstairs. There were two ways of going up to the imambara; one way was from the bazaar and this was used by the ladies and the other was from the sea shore which was used by gents. Two staircases were built on either side. The local mullas were Mulla Jafferali Alibhai, Mulla Vallimohamed Merali Dewji, Mulla Mohammedali Nanji and Mulla Nanji Bhanji, who was a very old man at the time. The mullas would give waez and majlis in the imambara upstairs from the wooden minbar. Later on we used to have alims coming from outside Lamu. They would stay in the madrassa at the top which was converted into a guesthouse when there weren’t any children left.
The purdah was strictly enforced in those days in Lamu. There was a wall with a wooden door in the middle of the imambara that was always closed. Next to the door was a window like the one in our mosque in Zanzibar. During niyyaz which was always at lunch time if the ladies needed anything extra they used to tap the window’s sill. Mwalimu Yusufu and Mwalimu Faraj used to teach the students Qur’an in the madrassa. On Thursday nights we would all go to the Chungani. Majlises were held there in the small building (now in ruins) with barazas outside. This building was built during the time of Molu Ramji. The oldest graves you can see in the Lamu Chungani today are of Daya Kanji, Damji Ramji, Molu Ramji, Walji Ramji, Alibhai Panju and Jaffer Panju.