The East African
Monday February 22 2021
The boda boda menace began during the 2017 election year when they were used for political rallies and were deemed job creators for the youth. PHOTO | RUPI MANGAT
Summary
The introduction of motorbikes in the historical sultanate threatens the very fabric of its being it even risks losing its status as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
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For centuries, the call of the muezzin, inviting the faithful to prayer in Lamu, the oldest Swahili settlement on the East African shores, has been the first sound at dawn. However, today another sound can be heard. That of motorbikes, popularly called
Umra Omar is an award-winning social entrepreneur, community leader, and the founder of Safari Doctors, a mobile medical clinic serving underprivileged communities in Kenya.
Omar and the Safari Doctors travel by boat, road and air to bring medical care to people living along a remote area of islands, the Lamu Archipelago, near the Kenyan-Somali border.
She spoke to CNN International’s African Voices Changemakers programme about how the organisation has grown from humble beginnings: “When we first started it was mainly about getting immunisations out to rural areas and making sure that a woman who wanted access to family planning could get it. So just providing that primary care of your cough syrups, your pain medication, and then advancing from going to about a hundred people a month to now up to like 2,500 people every month.”