Contemporary Old Town and Mombasa

The houses in Old Town are closely packed together. Winding footpaths between them lead to the narrow streets. Most houses are constructed of mud spread on a frame made of wooden poles plaited together with this core faced inside and out with cement. Roofs are generally of sheet metal, but a few are now tile, and, as recently as the 1970s, a few were still of the older and less desired thatch. Two-story houses are highly prestigious and are found primarily in the relatively affluent neighborhood of Kibokoni (the neighborhood traditionally occupied by the Three Tribes section) and only rarely in Mjua Kale (the Nine Tribes section's neighborhood). Even many of these large houses, like their more common single-story neighbors, are in need of paint and refacing, and the entire Old Town area has a somewhat neglected quality. Here and there, a few new apartment buildings and cement block houses with shingled roofs stand out, but the majority of these are owned by Indians or, in a few cases, Yemenis rather than by Swahili.

The old neighborhoods of Old Town including Kibokoni, Mjua Kale, and their subdivisions retain their traditional names. Most of the contemporary Swahili population are the descendants of families that have been in the same immediate area, often the same house, for many generations. But in most of these neighborhoods, a large proportion of the families, now a majority in most areas, are Indians or Yemeni Arabs whose roots go back a century or, more often, less and who have not merged into the Swahili group as immigrations of Omani Arabs more or less did a number of generations ago (see below).

Each Old Town neighborhood has its own Swahili mosque, and the adhan from the loudspeakers during the five daily calls to prayer rises above even the noise of the traffic in the narrow streets. There are Indian and Yemeni mosques in the same areas. Some of them, especially those of the Indians, are bigger and more expensive in construction and design than the older Swahili mosques.

Scattered throughout the residential areas are tiny shops, called reshoni (from the English word, rations), mostly run by Yeminis, where snacks, bread, rice, flour, cigarettes, kerosene, charcoal, matches, flashlight batteries, pots, pans, and sundries are sold. In most of the neighborghoods, these small shops are the only nonresidential buildings. Most of the larger businesses, banks, and commercial buildings are in the areas on the western side of the island, just beyond the Digo Road, the western boundary of Old Town.

In the last century and earlier, when Mombasa was inhabited mainly by Swahili and those closely associated with them, the western parts of the island were given over to Swahili fields and coconut plantations. This area now includes the business district and neighborhoods occupied by members of other ethnic groups. A substantial part of Mombasa's population lives on the northern or southern mainland, but few Swahili live outside Old Town. Those who do are either younger professional people living in affluent areas on the western part of the island or north mainland or relatively poor families whose forebears lost their Old Town house sites through some economic reverse and now live in the areas beyond the Digo Road now mainly occupied by others of limited means from different, mainly African, ethnic groups.